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Questions about the "end of Windows 7"



 
 
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  #196  
Old March 4th 19, 07:35 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 9:41 AM, pyotr filipivich wrote:
"Mayayana" on Sat, 2 Mar 2019 23:52:36 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"Bill in Co" surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote

| Did you ever consider the much leaner Kingston Office (aka WPS Office
now),
| or Softmaker Free Office? They are both a LOT less bloated then either
| OpenOffice or LibreOffice, but may not have everything you need, not sure.
| Just wondering.
|
Sounded interesting but I jut went to check them out.
WPS - website's a mess, mostly embedded in javascript.
Not much to see otherwise. The source code looks like
they require an email address.
Free 2018 - Website not much better. XP not supported.
No sign of older versions. Requires registration.


Was talking with The Wife this morning. If I had the mad skillz,
I'd write a word processor called "My Typewriter." Times Roman or
Courier as default, bold, underline or italics as options. Basic
editing. She said "Typewriters don't have bold and italics!" well,
yes, but ...
Then I got into feeping creatures. Typewriter clicks when you
press the keys, and a Ding! at the edge of the screen, or the Enter
key. an option to have random capital letters entered as bottom half
the capital above and top half of the lower case letter below.
Control H backs up, overstrikes the next key typed.

Oh well.



You forgot about the USB accessory that squirts a stream of white out at
the printer.
Ads
  #197  
Old March 4th 19, 07:59 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 10:47 AM, Char Jackson wrote:


Well, I did say people defend IV. ;-)

As with any software, you have to use it a bit to learn where things
are; I note you don't tell us what you use to do what IV does, but I
suspect if you did I'd find it just as non-intuitive as you find IV (and
I bet it'd be slower to do things, too).

(What was it you were wanting to _do_ in IrfanView that you found so
frustrating? What _do_ you normally use instead to do that?)


I need just a couple of things, and I want just a couple of additional
things.

Needs:
1. Quickly open and display a photo.

Double-click the file.
2. Easily and intuitively move forward and backward through a series of
photos.

space key forward backspace key backward

Wants:
3. Easily rotate left/right. Auto-save the results.

L or R I think autosave would be a problem. Ctrl-S brings up a save
dialog.
4. Ability to delete the current photo.

delete key

All have simple menu selections.

IV does #1, fails at #2, and I didn't get as far as checking how to do
#3 and #4. What does IV use to move through a series of photos, J and K
or some such? Is there a modifier involved? I don't remember, but I
figure if he can't get that part right, then it's not for me.

I use the built-in Windows Photo Viewer. It loads and displays a photo
in less than a second, navigation is via the cursor keys (!), rotation
and or deleting can be done via the keyboard or mouse. We have a winner.

[]


I like easy and familiar too.
In this case, all the shortcuts are exposed by a click of one of the 6
menus. And they're intuitive the second time you use them.

  #198  
Old March 4th 19, 08:14 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 1:07 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2019-03-03, Paul wrote:
Freedom from stuff that works :-/


I have not found that to be the case.

If there is ever something which is covered by NDA
or is delivered as a binary blob, "you can't have it".


I have not found that to be the case either. (For example, you
can run an Nvidia or AMD binary blob video driver if desired.
Or not. You have the freedom to choose.)

If you love aggravation, you're going to love Linux.


I have not found it aggravating at all and it has been my
primary OS for over 20 years.

That's the point.
If you were born in France, speaking French may not be a problem for you.
I was born in Microsoft. French is a PITA pour moi. And I'm not
the slightest bit interested in getting better at it for zero benefit.
The linux community has absolutely zero empathy for those not born in
Linux. That is the fatal flaw for desktop linux.
  #199  
Old March 4th 19, 08:32 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 9:48 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 3/2/19 4:00 PM, Bill in Co wrote:

[snip]

Yup, considered it.Â* Spent "a bit" of time using Cinnamon Lint, but
for me
it's just not worth all the hassle (like in getting and customizing the
programs, etc).Â* Plus I expect most of us are already too heavily
"invested"
in Windows, both program wise and knowledge wise.Â*Â* Mac is a closed off,
walled garden, and expensive, so that's out for me.Â* I like more
freedom of
choice.Â* :-)


The change is MUCH easier it you don't try to do it all at once. My
first use of Linux was with the web (on Firefox which I was already
using on Windows). I've done over 90% of that change. There's no need to
make it complete, when you can keep Windows for when you need it.

BTW, most things I heeded help with on Linux, have solutions on the web.

That's been my experience. Every problem gets a zillion Google hits, so it
must be widespread.

Problem is that the detailed explanation/solution is for a distro you
don't have and a 10 year old version at that. And you don't even learn
that until you find it doesn't work for you.
And it probably gives detailed examples using a text editor and
utilities your system doesn't have
on a desktop with a completely different look and feel.

So, you peel back the onion, load a bunch of new utilities, execute the
fix and it don't help.

This is my favorite linux fix for a USB wireless device.

sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/config
Add one line:
Code:
SUSPEND_MODULES="carl9170"

Took me weeks enduring linux newsgroup denizens telling me how stupid was
before someone offered the fix.
I am embarrassed that I couldn't figger that out by myself. I must be
that stupid after all...


I'd wager what you need is somewhere in that zillion google hits.
Good luck finding it. More good luck successfully executing it.
Even more good luck when that'd fixed and you have another layer of the
linux onion of chaos to fix.

About that time, I usually go ballistic and use the linux install DVD
as target practice.


  #200  
Old March 4th 19, 08:42 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
PeterC
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Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 02:54:15 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 07:32:00 +0000, PeterC
wrote:

OK, I'll risk excommunication: as an interim step, how does W8 compare with
W7 and W10?
I couldn't find a news group for W8, which should tell me something. I have
wondered if W8 could be tamed to be like W7. Thing is, I've managed to get
W7 very close to looking and feeling like XP, i.e. cut all the frippery and
crap.
Given the impending 'demise' of W7 I have wondered about W8. Sorry.


The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that it took me two years to get 8/8.1 to look and
act like 7, but now there are very few clues that it's not actually 7.
If you have the time to invest, I'm sure you can get there much sooner
than I did.

The Windows 8 group is alt.comp.os.windows-8 but it doesn't get much
activity these days.


Thanks. So, sort of worth considering, if only to avoid W10.
Almost every day I see headlines on news feeds about how MS has yet again
borked W10. There seems to be no way of stopping an update until it's
sorted.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway
  #201  
Old March 4th 19, 08:48 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
PeterC
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Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 10:20:01 -0500, Mayayana wrote:

"PeterC" wrote

| OK, I'll risk excommunication: as an interim step, how does W8 compare
with
| W7 and W10?
| I couldn't find a news group for W8, which should tell me something.

Strange, isn't it? The same thing happened with
WinME. Microsoft disowned their baby and even
left it out of official documents. And everyone went
along with them -- without question, pronouncing
the disowned version to be unusable junk.

big snip
Thanks for this - I'd seen only odd bits of what you mention as I was
staying on XP as long as possible. Changed to W7 only because the old PC
just couldn't hack it any more.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway
  #202  
Old March 4th 19, 08:56 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 10:16 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 3:51 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Mike
writes: []
If you have a SSD and use sleep instead of shutdown, boot time is a
non-issue.

If you use sleep instead of shutdown, does it matter whether you have an
SSD?


Benchmarks say yes, but systems and benchmarks get tuned for maximum sales
impact.
For a typical user, most of us here aren't typical, doing web browsing,
watching videos, email, etc. I've found that the perceived perkiness of
my systems are dramatically improved by moving from 5400RPM to 7200RPM to
10,000 RPM drives. The improvement FEELS far greater than I expected
from the numbers.

After it gets booted, my SSD doesn't FEEL all that much faster than
a defragmented hard drive.

I have a win10 laptop that takes seven minutes to get to the login
screen then several more to startup Comodo and all the background stuff.
A SSD makes that a LOT faster. I don't have a number because, while a lot
better, it's still too slow for my liking.
After boot, the SSD improvement factor doesn't justify the $70 cost of a
SDD for a $5 laptop. Bottom line is that computer is in a drawer
somewhere.
Part of that may be due to the fact that I don't have any systems made
this decade. The disk function is limited by the SATA channel, the
buffering system and probably lots of other stuff.

For a big file transfer, it starts out fast, but when the buffer fills up,
it slows down due to other system limitations.
For small file transfers, it seems that it takes longer to establish
the destination than to move the file.

Web browsing gets limited by the ISP and the cascade of crap
and ads on each page.
Speedtest shows 30Mbps, but the meter showing actual transfers
during web browsing shows mostly nothing while waiting for
DNS and all the crap to connect and queue up.


If you have an old laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM hard drive,
don't even bother trying. My experience suggests that boot time is
longer than battery life. ;-(

Bottom line...INEVITABLE, good enough for reasonably powerful hardware.
Urgency depends only on whether 7 still does what you need.

It does. (3G RAM - and I don't think of it as that "old".) Though maybe
I should think about getting a machine in case this one fails - another
7 machine, that is.


Memory is cheap. Adding more might help.
I had 32-bit 7 with 4GB of RAM.
Every update to the browser seemed to suck up more memory.
It got to the point that Opera and Firefox kept crashing with
out of memory error, even though task manager showed there had
been a gigabyte or more free.
I changed to 64-bit 7 and a total of 8GB of ram. The Browser
problem went away.
Since I'd already found 64-bit hardware drivers and needed to reinstall
all the software and had been proactive about getting the free digital
entitlement, the jump to win10 became the best option. I'd been
saving a garage sale SSD, so that too went into the mix.

Turns out that I seriously underestimated the effort required to coax
my ancient software into win10 compatibility. Took about three months,
but it's mostly working. I would do it again, because it's INEVITABLE.


[]
Under the current rules, the penalty for running an unactivated
windows 10
is miniscule. You can't do some drive encryption stuff and there are
minimal restrictions to what desktop customization you can do via the
GUI. That may change at any time.

I'd be using Classic Shell (or the other one) anyway.


I'd recommend against that. Back at the beginning of 10, I tried that
stuff.
Just bite the bullet and use the existing tools to tweek it a bit.

This was my windows 7 user interface page:
https://i.imgur.com/pU7d724.jpg

It's just a window with a bunch of links to stuff I use. The only thing
windows explorer has to do is manage the window and respond to the click.

For win10, I just dragged links from there into the start page like this:
https://i.imgur.com/RHkZ0tR.jpg

Takes the same number of clicks to get to exactly the same result.
The user interface does not have to be an issue.
Once you decide to just quit whimpering about it and do it, it's no more
difficult than what you have now.


I took a look at that start menu in your Windows 10 jpg. Is that what you
call a good and usable start menu?? It's just a bunch of silly tiles to me.
So I gather that's what Windows 10 is all about - tiles up the kazoo. Why
would any rational person want that, over the much simpler and more
descriptive text menu entries for their programs?


Well, I put them there, so I know what they are. If I forget, hovering
over one pops up the label.
The other image of the window of program launchers has labels.
You can change the window format to display text instead of icons if you
like.

The *only* way I could see these tiles being useful is if you are using a
touch screen tablet, but even then, the mini tiles are still lacking any
labels, but yes, I know you could probably just remember what they are for,
but, why bother with such a dumb GUI in the first place? Unless it's for a
touchscreen tablet, perhaps, which is what I think Windows 10 seems to have
been (in large part) also designed for. MS wanted an OS that could serve
"double duty", and as such, not do either one, very well. But C'est La
Vie, I guess.

That sounds like a rational explanation for why. But the why is irrelevant.
It's what we got. It's what we use.

I made a recommendation to suck it up and learn to use it.
Your choice to do something different is your right.
I'm just trying to help.



  #203  
Old March 4th 19, 09:08 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 10:26 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
Take a look for yourself. Avidemux and Audacity, pro-level
video and audio software, are only 45 MB each on my system.
The program I use more than any other, Notepad, is 67 KB.
The Sysinternals programs are all small and dependency-free.
Sumatra PDF reader is 11 MB, while Adobe Reader was something
like 120 last I saw. IrfanView, a beautifully-made image viewer
that borders on being a fullscale image editor, is about 3 MB
without the plugins. I show it using 5 MB RAM to sit there,
while Pale Moon is using about 150 MB... just to sit there!

That mess adds up. Mike was just talking about how one of
the reasons he thinks he needs Win10 is because browsers
are so resource-hungry.


That's not what I meant to communicate.
I need more MEMORY because browsers are hungry.
I need 64-bit windows to get more memory.
Once I get to the point that I have to reload everything,
it's prudent to make the inevitable
leap to win10. It's the shortest distance to where I'm
gonna end up anyway.


I don't see why you need more memory. I'm doing just fine over here with 1
or 2 GB of RAM, and the browsers have been no problem.


I guess I should have asked you first. But it's too late now.

For me, Win7 on 1GB of ram was intolerably slow.
2GB was dramatically better. 4GB better yet.

I am *guessing* the only reason you "need" more memory is you are running
several memory intensive programs all at once. Or some Adobe software,
perhaps.


nope...
According to task manager, I had plenty of available ram. But Opera
browser still crashed occasionally with out of memory error. Seemed to
be more to do with the number of tabs open.

How did we get to such an absurd
point, where modern hardware -- multi-core CPUs and
multiple GBs of RAM -- can't handle the software load?
Sloppiness and bloat. The space was there, so people
used it. They got sloppy.


We haven't gotten to that point, if you're judicious in your software
selections. :-) However, the newer OS's are indeed more bloated, just
like the latest editions of much software, that few really need. So from
that point of view, maybe "we" have.



  #204  
Old March 4th 19, 09:36 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 10:29 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 9:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
I agree with all of that last paragraph, and I apply it to a program
that has feature-bloat. When a program is feature-bloated, it'll have
endless menus and submenus, with tons of keyboard shortcuts that make no
sense, and a GUI that has a hard time showing me what I need to know.
There are different kinds of bloat, but that's the kind of bloat that I
object to. Not disk space.


I believe that you're technically correct.
Problem is not technical.
Developers maximize profit.
Profit may be money or street cred or whatever turns them on.
You 'profit' by being the bestest to the mostest.
If a competitor has a feature that people want, you MUST add it.
And you can't remove features that most no longer want or need.
The result it bloat.
The landscape changes FAST! Shortest development time is far more
effective than smallest code.

Be glad that computers have increased many orders of magnitude in
capability.
If you really care about it, stick with an old version you like.
I use MSOffice 2000.


Same here!! But I'm surprised, given what you've been saying.


IIRC, Office 2000 was the last version that didn't require activation.
I do a lot of hardware/OS swaps and not having to reactivate office
was a benefit. Apparently, there's some unspecified limit on how
many times you can do that before the key gets blacklisted.

I've never had any need for anything it can't do. I've only encountered
docx a few times and there are ways to read it.
Actually,
Office 2003 would have been ok, too. It went to pot with Office 2007 and
its sequels.


Sad to hear that. I have several copies of 2007 that I've never tried.
I thought I had a 2013, but can't find it.
And that stupid ribbon.
I thought you could eliminate the ribbon.



  #205  
Old March 4th 19, 09:58 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/3/2019 11:42 PM, PeterC wrote:
On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 02:54:15 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 07:32:00 +0000, PeterC
wrote:

OK, I'll risk excommunication: as an interim step, how does W8 compare with
W7 and W10?
I couldn't find a news group for W8, which should tell me something. I have
wondered if W8 could be tamed to be like W7. Thing is, I've managed to get
W7 very close to looking and feeling like XP, i.e. cut all the frippery and
crap.
Given the impending 'demise' of W7 I have wondered about W8. Sorry.


The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that it took me two years to get 8/8.1 to look and
act like 7, but now there are very few clues that it's not actually 7.
If you have the time to invest, I'm sure you can get there much sooner
than I did.


I only played with windows 8 briefly, but don't think it buys anything over
win 10.

IIRC, if you let it do every update, MS tried to install all the
telemetry junk into win7 as well.

The Windows 8 group is alt.comp.os.windows-8 but it doesn't get much
activity these days.


Thanks. So, sort of worth considering, if only to avoid W10.
Almost every day I see headlines on news feeds about how MS has yet again
borked W10. There seems to be no way of stopping an update until it's
sorted.


Windows update blocker
Windows update minitool
wumgr.exe
just to name a few.

Windows allows delaying updates
IIRC you can delay major updates up to a year with a registry edit.
set metered connection

Problem with letting windows delay updates is that, you can't get just
one update. Turn off metered connection and you get 'em all.

Uncontrolled updates at inopportune times was my major ROADBLOCK to
win10 installation.
That seems to be manageable at this time with the above-mentioned tools
that let you identify updates and decide whether to block or install
them. You have no basis to determine which are safe, but some info
shows up in the newsgroups.

I installed this 10 system in January and it's still at 1803.



  #206  
Old March 4th 19, 01:02 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Java Jive
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Posts: 391
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 04/03/2019 06:03, Mike wrote:

Computers are so fast that speed ain't that much of an issue.
Back when it was runtime difference between half a minute and five minutes,
efficiency mattered a lot.


Well, you'd've thought it shouldn't be by now, but it certainly still is
here. Win10 as supplied on this second hand/used PC took several
minutes to boot, the W7 that I replaced it with comfortably less than a
minute.
  #207  
Old March 4th 19, 01:39 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Roger Blake[_2_]
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Posts: 536
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 2019-03-04, Mike wrote:
That's the point.
If you were born in France, speaking French may not be a problem for you.
I was born in Microsoft. French is a PITA pour moi.


If anyone prefers Windows then they should certainly use it. I'm not
willing to put up with it but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. But
having used Linux for both personal and business use for over 20 years
the insistence some people have that one "needs Microsoft" to do anything
useful makes no sense to me and is contrary to my own experience.

the slightest bit interested in getting better at it for zero benefit.
The linux community has absolutely zero empathy for those not born in
Linux. That is the fatal flaw for desktop linux.


I can's speak for anyone else, let alone the "linux community", but
in general I have zero empathy for anyone who expects to have a good
result using a complex piece of technology without at least understanding
the basics, no matter what that technology happens to be. (They are
referred to as "lusers" by system administrators for a reason.)

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  #208  
Old March 4th 19, 02:26 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mike
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Posts: 185
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 3/4/2019 4:02 AM, Java Jive wrote:
On 04/03/2019 06:03, Mike wrote:

Computers are so fast that speed ain't that much of an issue.
Back when it was runtime difference between half a minute and five
minutes,
efficiency mattered a lot.


Well, you'd've thought it shouldn't be by now, but it certainly still is
here.Â* Win10 as supplied on this second hand/used PC took several
minutes to boot, the W7 that I replaced it with comfortably less than a
minute.

SSD will improve that significantly.
For what it's worth, I never had any W7 machine boot in less than a minute.
  #209  
Old March 4th 19, 03:15 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
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Posts: 2,679
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

In message , Roger Blake
writes:
On 2019-03-04, pyotr filipivich wrote:
And the manual was very useful for forms with "carbons". I could
eyeball alignment and fill it out. Really helpful for temp assignment
Time Sheets.


Although I no longer use a typewriter, I do have a pretty ancient
Panasonic KX-P1124 dot matrix printer for use with multipart forms.
I actually bought it for use with a Commodore 64 what seems like
a lifetime ago. I'm continually amazed that it still works.

I'm not. Impact ("dot matrix") printers were simple, and - mostly -
built like a tank. (And also cost nearly nothing to run.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes
  #210  
Old March 4th 19, 03:37 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

"Mike" wrote

| I have a good example of that close to home: My most
| popular download currently is an MSI unpacker. It unpacks
| MSI installer files. The only other program I know of that can
| actually do the same thing is called Less Msierables. All
| other programs I know of that are claimed to do the job
| actually can't. (They run an admin install or maybe, like
| 7-Zip, they can extract a CAB file. But they can't actually
| unpack the installer.)

| Got any links for MSI unpacker?
| I found MSI_Unpacker_v1.5.msi
| Claims to be portable, but the zip download is nowhere to be found.
| 7zip won't unpack the msi.
| I did find a zip for v1.3. It runs but does nothing to unpack v1.5
| It's suspicious that a program can't unpack itself.

I don't know what that is. I find several links, but
none that works without javascript. And the program
descriptions vary from one listing to the next: An
American flag, a New Zealand link, one author name
"Gergar", another named "Mike Williams". I have no idea
what that is. But they've used the same name as mine.

https://jsware.net/jsware/msicode.php5

If you prefer to be cautious there's also a VBScript
version there. The EXE version is simpler and better
at handling very big installers, like a Windows SDK.
But the VBS version works fine. The VBS is "open
source". And there's an HTA version, using VBScript,
but that's mainly for people who want to inspect details
from installer point of view, such as which "components"
are in which "feature" and which files are in which
"component". In general that's not relevant.

The VBS version uses the scripting dispatch, or
"late bound", interface of msi.dll. The EXE version
uses the Win32 function versions of the same library.
If you're curious, the MSI help file is pretty good and
provides all the info. It's in the Win32 platform SDK.
But MSIs are *incredibly, frivolously* complex. It's
not a simple system.

Until recently, the Universal Extractor author was
using my program without asking, and ignoring the
single requirement in my license: Don't redistribute.
Give people a link instead. (I don't make any money
either way, but people should be able to get things
direct.)

I had to remove the command line option. I think
UE is a good example of wrapper software. I use
it myself, but the author is only collecting as many
unpackers of various types as they can find and
creating a UI to call them. When they were using my
unpacker it was one of 4 options, including msix.exe
(which is only for extracting resources) and admin
install (which is limited and requires admin permissions).

Apparently the UE author hadn't actually tried any of
them. Like lessmsi, the source code is available but
all the source code is doing in UE is to check the file
type and run command lines.

| Anyhoo, 7zip does most of what I need, but occasionally, it would
| be nice to have a tool available for the ones that don't.

Have you tried Universal Extractor? It's pretty good. But
it's just an aggregator program. It's mainly useful for Inno
and 7-Zip installers. And you have to keep the various
unpackers updated, such as innounp for Inno setup
packages. UE doesn't actually unpack anything itself.
But a lot of setup packages use one of those
installer types. Inno is very popular with people who
don't actually know how to make an installer and don't
want to have to understand the details. The Inno author
tries to stay on top of all that. (For instance, not
overwriting newer files; not trying to install system files
in newer Windows versions; not putting files in personal
app data that should go in all users app data; etc.)

7-Zip treats an MSI as a compound storage file, which
it technically is. But the result is that 7-Zip can only
take out an embedded CAB. It doesn't recognize the
MSI database. The files in the CAB are almost invariably
ridiculous names like GUIDs. (Microsoft likes to slap
a GUID anywhere they can.) So getting the CAB out
(which is relatively easy with script, anyway) is not
especially useful.

I like 7-Zip for exotic compression types. And it's
incredibly fast. It can also open CHM and HXS files well
enough. I just wish the author would polish up the
UI a bit. I never use it unless I have to. And I still
haven't figured out how to just create a ZIP file
with it. I use Filzip for basic ZIP operations.


 




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