Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 September 17

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September 17

Can I make my PC beep when reboot is complete ?

That is, at the login panel. I realize that the speakers may not be available at that point, so a beep from the motherboard would be fine. I have two Windows 7 PCs, one 32-bit and the other 64-bit. This beep would alert me that the reboot is complete, and I may now log in. That way I wouldn't need to stare at it to know when it's ready. StuRat (talk) 11:45, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Your question has been driving me crazy - I know I read an article explaining that 7 plays a sound once the logon screen is ready, and it compared it to Vista where the sound could play before the user could actually login. Searches bring up nothing but pages on how to change the sound, but I finally found it: [1]. If your speakers are on, then Windows should play a sound once the logon prompt appears. Is yours not playing the sound, or is there a delay before it does? Or by "speakers may not be available" do you mean you're like me and often have them off, so you need it to use the motherboard speaker? Katie R (talk) 12:39, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Here's some pages about getting Windows 7 to beep using the motherboard speaker: [2], [3]; I searched around and it doesn't look like anyone has written a program to do this. As Katie mentions above, 7 plays a sound at the login screen, as opposed to Vista where it was before; the reasoning is explained in the link above: "You may also be wondering what happened to the startup sound. In Vista, the sound had to be synchronized with the pearl animation to produce the highest quality experience. This has potential performance impact on some hardware, as we require the system’s sound stack to be loaded to complete the pearl sequence. In the cases when we are waiting for the system’s sound playback to be ready, a delay can occur in getting to the desktop. As such, we changed the sound to now play asynchronously, anytime after the logon screen loads. On most hardware that we tested, this is right when the logon screen displays. We heard customer feedback in Vista that the sound played and caught your attention, but boot was not yet complete. So in addition to performance benefits, this change also improves the user experience by letting users know when their machine is ready for use." Though I rarely hear it on the Win7 desktop I use or my Vista laptop because I rarely have my external speakers on; you'd have to leave them on all the time in order for that startup sound to be of any use. Though I guess a workaround could be turning your speakers up when you leave the computer after choosing "reboot"; then, when you return after hearing the notification sound you can turn it back down. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:26, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I currently get a motherboard beep near the start of the boot process, and no sound when it's ready to boot. I have it hooked up to headphones, which are turned on but not on my head at the time. Still, I'd expect to hear sound from them, since they are about a foot from my ears, and I hear other sounds from them. Is the volume quite low on this "ready" sound ? Could it be disabled on my PC ? If so, how do I turn it back on ? Is it one type of sound, which might be currently disabled, while other sounds continue to play ? StuRat (talk) 03:38, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

If it is disabled, see this page to turn it back on. --.Yellow1996.^(ЬMИED¡) 03:44, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

"Play Windows Startup sound" was already checked. However, I suspect that this means the flourish played after logon is complete and Windows is running. What I am looking for is a sound to tell me the reboot is complete and it's waiting for my PW. StuRat (talk) 03:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

UPDATE: I turned off all other sounds in the room and put the headphones on during a reboot, and found it does make a sound where I want, but the volume level is quite low, relative to other sounds the PC makes, say when I play music. Is there any way to crank up the volume on this particular sound ? I tried switching to some other desktop sound themes, and Savannah seemed slightly louder, but still not loud enough. StuRat (talk) 04:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Could you modify the sound file used in Audacity? 129.215.47.59 (talk) 10:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Alternatively just find an alternative file, or even make your own perhaps of you yelling 'MY COMPUTER IS ON'. However I wonder if there is a wider problem here. I'm pretty sure the login sound is counted a system sound. The example given 'relative to other sounds the PC makes, say when I play music' is clearly not a system sound. Is it possible you've turned down the volume on 'system sounds' which is why the logon sound is so soft? I believe 'system sounds' should show up in the mixer pretty much all the time so it should be easy to check. Of course you could turn up system sounds and turn everything else down but this is likely to be annoying particularly since I'm not aware there's a way to make the default for new apps low (although it's not something I've ever needed to look in to). Nil Einne (talk) 12:48, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The "System sounds" volume was set to max. I think the system sound recordings just aren't very loud. To substitute my own sound, what formats can I use ? StuRat (talk) 12:54, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Whoops reading more carefully I just realised the problem is in Windows 7 (and Vista and 8) the startup sound isn't actually easily changeable unlike with other sounds as it's just the 'play Windows startup sound' thing rather than letting you select. It seems it is possible in 7 by modifying a file [4] but not that easy, well unless you want to risk tools I can't vouch for [5] [http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/63398-startup-sound-change-windows-7-a.html. On the other hand, if it changes with a theme, there must be someway to customise it without having to modify system files, at worst creating your own theme or modding an existing one. Nil Einne (talk) 13:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course the other alternative is to just give up on the Windows 7 system sounds to do what you want. It seems to me from experience and also other comments [6] that there's no reason you can do this with scheduled task although I haven't tried this particular task. That way you could even make it us th PC speaker (or both) if you really want, just find or write a program that plays to the speaker. Nil Einne (talk) 13:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks. StuRat (talk) 02:22, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Changing the HD serial number (of the hardware, rather than of the volume). Possible?

HOOTmag (talk) 14:08, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Changing the serial number is something you'll probably want to try asking the manufacturer about. Most drives will have a disk signature that is often used much like a serial number to uniquely identify a drive, and it is a filesystem feature that can be changed. Format routines are designed to preserve the signature, but in Windows you can use diskpart to change it: [7] Katie R (talk) 13:46, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I suspect the hardware serial number is held on the drive's firmware (as well as probably being printed on the label stuck to the drive casing). Searching for HD firmware flash suggests tools exist, but usually only to update a particular manufacturer's firmware. I haven't yet found if anything will let you change the serial number. But why would you want to do that anyway? Astronaut (talk) 16:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

(Re why one would want to do this:) There is a number (possibly more than one) uniquely identifying each disk on a Windows 7 machine. It's more than a year ago that I changing tried changing this, unsuccessfully, and eventually gave up. As far as I can remember, this is not the same thing as the UUID. The scenario where this would have made sense is the following: I bought a new machine, with an empty disk of the same size as the system disk. I reserved space on the system disk for installing Linux. I then cloned the first disk onto the second disk, installed Linux and Grub. At that point, each disk holds identical installations of Windows. With Xp, it was easy to configure grub to boot the Windows disk of my choice. This allowed me to maintain a "virgin", clean install of the OS as it originally was delivered, and to keep it updated with only the necessary, security updates. The second disk was my main disk, where I installed the programs I use, etc (there were data disks as well, but that's beside the point). If something bad happened to my main OS disk, I could erase it, dd it back from the virgin disk, and reinstall my programs. With Win 7, this was no longer possible. My interpretation of symptoms and error messages was that the reason had something to do with a disk-identifying signature of some sort. It's a long time ago that I struggled with this, so I can't provide details. But this is a scenario in which an answer to the OP's question would have provided a solution to a problem. Anyway, I ended up installing grub on both disks, and using the BIOS boot device select options to achieve the functionality I wanted, in a rather more cumbersome way than I was used to. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Windows 7 is using the disk signature that I mentioned in my first response - that's why I posted it, your sort of problem seemed like the most likely reason someone would be asking the question. The fact that disk formatting and imaging tools tend preserve it rather than rewrite it unless told not to can lead to all sorts of annoying boot problems when switching disks. Katie R (talk) 12:51, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

blanking drop-down fields menu items in fillable PDFs, once invoked

Hey all. I often have to fill out PDF forms at work that have drop-down menu items, such as a date, a State and so on. When you start such a form those sections that have a field are blank. You fill out preset items by clicking on an arrow and then choosing from a list. This would not be a problem, except that sometimes I want to revert it back to a blank. The issue is that once I've invoked a field, and chosen an item, I can't figure out how to blank the field again. I can go back to the drop-down menu and choose a different item from the list, but there is no entry for blanking it – there is no "no answer" you can choose. Anyone know a way to blank such a field once invoked? What I end up doing is printing then using white out ribbon. By the way, I am using Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional.--108.27.62.131 (talk) 15:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

What happens if you press the delete key? Astronaut (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Laptop serving a network?

Can a laptop without an external router host a wireless network? A plain laptop with wireless do it? Are there internal routers? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Some 802.11 adapters allow this; some don't. The key part is enabling the hostednetwork option (sometimes called "AP mode" or "access point mode") on the adapter. A howto (which I haven't personally tried) for doing this on Windows 7 is here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 21:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Today at work my wife saw a wifi network for a business that is several miles away - way too far for a signal. When a person left early, the wifi network went away. We don't understand what is going on. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

That's probably due to a weird misfeature of some version of Windows ad-hoc wireless network - see the first sentence the "how it works" section in this article. That says the bug was fixed in XP's SP3; thus it shouldn't be present at all in Vista/7/8. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:11, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like what is happening because my wife says that the person does have XP. Also, it is reasonable that they have logged into the wifi that it was showing today. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I've used Windows 7 ap mode with a Ralink 3072 device without major issue. Nil Einne (talk) 13:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Today a different WiFi network showed up that way. My wife went to the person who's laptop she suspected, and sure enough, the person had been logged into the WiFis that were showing up. She is using XP SP3 though, and SP3 was supposed to fix the problem (ref). My wife had her install 15-20 security updates. Perhaps she got it before she had SP3, and SP3 prevents it from happening, but doesn't get rid of it. I suggested that they run Microsoft Security Scan, but they haven't yet. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:49, 20 September 2013 (UTC)