Any computer wizz's here?

[red750]

I don't know if it is a recent Windows update change or not, but my Ctrl key seems to have lost some of it's functions. 

 

I used to be able to press Ctrl and + or - to increase or decrease the page zoom (eg. 75% - 125%). Now I have to click on the 3 lines under the close window X for a dropdown menu.

 

Also, when choosing files to add, in the "Open" window, I can select files listed together by clicking the first, then holding down Shift, clicking the last file. To select random files, I could click the first, hold down Ctrl and individually click the others (eg. 1,4,5,7 etc.) This no longer works. I have to upload them one at a time. Any ideas?

[red750]

Further to the above, to choose the shaded photos, I click on the first, hold Shift and click the last. If I wanted 1,2,4 and 5, I could do that, then hold Ctrl and click 3. That would remove it from the bulk open. Now that does not work.

 

[spacesailor]

And I thought it was ME . ( not the ' Millenium Edition ) .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

Try some stuff here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/specific-keys-on-keyboard-not-working-ctrl-alt/65ead128-a947-42ce-9c0b-8c6aa293d363

[old man emu]

Ha! Ha!

Got to laugh along with Microsoft for wiping the smiles off those keyboard whizz-kids who knew all the keyboard shortcut and mocked those of us happy to use the drop-down menus. There is a Devil after all and he stands beyond the Gates.

[willedoo]

23 hours ago, red750 said:

I don't know if it is a recent Windows update change or not, but my Ctrl key seems to have lost some of it's functions. 

 

I used to be able to press Ctrl and + or - to increase or decrease the page zoom (eg. 75% - 125%). Now I have to click on the 3 lines under the close window X for a dropdown menu.

 

Also, when choosing files to add, in the "Open" window, I can select files listed together by clicking the first, then holding down Shift, clicking the last file. To select random files, I could click the first, hold down Ctrl and individually click the others (eg. 1,4,5,7 etc.) This no longer works. I have to upload them one at a time. Any ideas?

Peter, I have Windows 10 and haven't had an update for about a month. The Ctl function as you mentioned is still working.

 

I mainly use Firefox as a browser. It has a lot of add-ons available, and I have page zoom -+ buttons on the top toolbar that also has the URL and the home, bookmark buttons etc.. It's an easy way to zoom the page. Another handy Firefox add-on is a javascript switcher, which locates on the same toolbar. It's good for bypassing the type of paywalls that rely on javascript to block you.

[red750]

On 08/12/2022 at 1:25 PM, willedoo said:

page zoom -+ buttons on the top toolbar

That little magnifying glass appears if the page is increased or reduced, and has a 'reset' button to 100%, but disappears when the page is set at 100%.

 

Haven't bothered to change the system, as I now know the workarounds.

 

Ctrl and F does not bring up the search function, but it is also in the dropdown menu.

[willedoo]

This is the section of the Firefox toolbar with the zoom controls. To the left of the zoom controls are the bookmark icon, javascript switch icon, and the toggle reader view icon.

 

I just tried the reader view toggle for the first time ever. It changes to magnified text with some other controls. One of them is audio. It has a female American voice reading out aloud the text. Probably not something I'd use.

 

 

[red750]

I use the Brave browser as it cuts out almost all adverts (they're a pain in Chrome).

 

Here is a screenprint  showing the dropdown menu and functions, the menu button and the resizing magnifying glass. The page is at 80% zoom.

 

Another thing I've found is that you can't use CTRL and B, I, or U for bold, italics or underline. You have to highlight the text and use the functions at the top of the text box.  I don't use these often, so it's no great drama.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Just to shed like on the use of keyboard shortcuts.. Generally, the applications have to respect them and it can be the applications that choose not to implement them, or in fact use different keys altogether - depending on what application the language is written in and what framework they use for the GUI (graphical user interface - a term used to differentiate windows type screens from the old DOS/Green Screens).

 

Some apps allow the user to specify key mappings as well.. 

 

Anything written with Microsoft languages comes by default with the stuff switched on, but programmers can switch them off, either statically (when the code is written) or dynamically - when the code switches on and off at run time based on certain events (for example, software with digital rights management simply switches off the ability to select and copy/cut/paste). It would be rare that Windows stops sending these keystrokes to the application and it would be indicative of a hardware fault, keyboard driver corruption, registry corruption, or some other operating system malfunction.

 

 

[spacesailor]

My new computer has the @   under the  "  button .

No one has managed the ' permanently fix it , as it seems to reset to the configuration after shutdown .

But I can live with it .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

I can't remember if Aus has a different keyboard layout, but US layouts have the '@' key above the 2 button (so, shift-2), and UK keyboard layounds have it above the ' button (so shift-'). There are heaps of different formats, btw. I noticed my son's gaming keyboard has the @ under the ', but as I have my keyboard layout set to UK, it `(which I use as he doesn't like it anymore, and it has spring-loaded keys which are much better than membrane). I guess I can find real keyboard driver for this keyboard so the keys work in the way they are shown on the keyboard, but I am so used to the standard UK keyboard layout, it makes no differnce to me. If you have the keyboard make and model, search for the driver specific to it, download, and install it.

 

Al alternate is to download a windows keyboard layout manager and save a new format.. You will then have to set it to the default format in your keyboard setup in Windows. Here is some info on how to do it (I have never tried it, but I know others that have): https://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/install-custom-keyboard-windows-10/

 

[red750]

I wasn't sure where to put this, so I'll go slightly off topic and post in this thread.

 

I just thought I would explain how I got the photos of the helicopter midair incident and Porepunkah crash so quickly. We watch all TV, including free-to-air through the Foxtel IQ box. This makes a temporary recording of the program you are watching so you can rewind and replay. When I see something like those two reports, I grab my iPhone, rewind to the start of the report, freeze-frame what I want to photograph and snap it with the phone. Then I email the image to my laptop. I can then fast forward the program on the IQ box and catch up with what happened while I was taking the photo. Fast forwarding through the ad breaks lets me catch up to the program.

[willedoo]

That's a clever way to do it.

[rgmwa]

I periodically get invitations from Microsoft to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for free. Reading through the list of differences between 10 and 11, it seems to actually be more limited in most areas, and do more in things I'm not interested in. Is upgrading worthwhile?

[red750]

Most of MIcrosoft's advances are backward.

[onetrack]

All of MS's programme "advances" are about increasing revenue for MS, on a constant basis. You used to get so much for free with Windows - now you have to keep paying for every second thing you want to use, that comes from MS. I used to love the amount of free graphics you got with Windows 98 - you could do much more with those old programmes.

[red750]

 

 

Try sticking that in your laptop/iPad.

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

This is an intersting trick for runnign Windows on older hardware:

 

[spacesailor]

My problem is old WIFI not able to connect to the New router .

Every ' update ' is a problem coming UP, from the New update.

spacesailor

[willedoo]

I have a question. I use a laptop and via a hard drive dock, use my previous laptop's drive as an external storage hard drive. All the important files have been copied across to the new laptop, and the old drive is used as auxiliary storage for files and folders, mainly photos and video. The 500GB drive is now down to less than 2GB of available space. I've noticed the Windows folder left over from when it was a main laptop drive consists of several GB. Question is - can I delete that folder without compromising other stored data on the drive. I would think yes, as you could totally reformat the drive and use it as external storage, no problems. I figure that without the drive booting in a laptop as the main drive, that Windows folder is just excess baggage. I can't see how any other data on the drive needs the Windows folder to exist.

[Jerry_Atrick]

What version of Windows did your old laptop run? And what version of Windows is your new laptop?

 

Assuming you have not used the old laptop drive to restore to the new laptop, you should be OK. I would do the following:

1. Create a recovery drive, if you have the space. It will essentially take an image you can boot from.
2. Take a backup to a USB drive of the directory. 
3. Delete the directory.
4. Restore the directory if you find any instability.

Your Windows directory contains all the OS executables, .DLLs (callable libraries), utilities, registries, and things like that. It does sometimes contain data used by other apps, but those apps would not be playing within the rules (norms) for Windows. The above is just 'to be sure. Note, if you delete things, they go to the watebasket usually and can be recovered, but sometimes if you delete a lot, Windows will think it is too large for the wastebasket, and will ask you if you want to proceed with deleting the files forever. Even then (or when you empty your wastebasket), your files are still recoverable until you start writing new data to the disk - and often not for a while after you write data tot he disk. There is a thing called a FAT (File Allocation Table). When you empty your wastebasket or "permanently" delete a file, all it does is say those nodes of the disk are now available to be written - it does not physically delete the data until you write more data to the disk and the Windows software that writes to the disk on behalf of your apps that want to write data to the disk actually uses those nodes. (This is sometimes why deleted data is recovered in those high profile cases).

 

OK, after all that verbage, there is a simpler way; for data you don't use often, just compress it. Right click the file in File Explorer, select Send To, then select Compressed File as such:

 

With the exception of media files (.jpgs, .wmvs, and the like), you will get sometimes 10:1 compression, but it works better on larger files due to the algorithm (it is free with Windows, so it isn't going to be the best and the algorithm is basic).  For example, here, you can see a 783K file go down to 121k, but a 21KB file (admittedly .xlsx formats are already optimised) only go down to 18K. 

Delete the original file so you only have the compressed file, and you will save a lot of space.

 

Some apps will open a file direct from a compressed file (library), or yo8u may have to extract them before you use them.

 

 

 

 

[willedoo]

Thanks Jerry. The old and new laptops both ran/run Windows 10. I've got a few other drives where I can back up what I want to keep. I usually only delete small files. If a lot of data is involved I usually do a simple one time overwrite. I do that out of laziness as I regularly use cleaners like CCleaner, Clean Disc Security, which is set to overwrite recycle bin files more than once. As said, it's just laziness as I couldn't be bothered changing the settings in the apps to suit different deletes.

 

Maybe another option is to copy what I want to another fresh drive, then reformat this one and start using it for other data in the future. This drive, as said, is from my old laptop, but I often buy second hand laptop drives on evilbay to use as external storage drives. They are cheap, reliable storage, and are usually from upgraded government machines and mostly haven't done much work. You can pick up good second hand SSHD drives fairly cheap.

[willedoo]

I might try that compression option thanks Jerry. I've known about it but never been in the habit of using it.

[Jerry_Atrick]

If you have other drives, they are definitnely an option. However, if you are going to back up to the drives and leave them in a corner, I would recommend connecting them every 3 months and use varuous disck checking  utilities to ensure they are not degrading. The simplest is to open a DOS command window (click start menu, type cmd, and right click and open it as administrator), and then type chkdsk x: (where x: is the disk name of your remote disk). If you have drive scanning tools on your other utulities, they may be more user friendly. 

 

chkdsk stands for check disk, and after it has finished its scan, it will finish with a summary that looks something like the below:

 

 224070655 KB total disk space.
 150778828 KB in 649065 files.
    406384 KB in 225451 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
   1175895 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
  71709548 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  56017663 total allocation units on disk.
  17927387 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 32.61 seconds (32611 ms).

 

If the bad secot count is positive, you can runn chkdsk x: /f, to try and fix it, but I would recommend getting another disk to store your data on as a backup.