A couple of days ago, when I switched on my PC and opened My Computer I was presented with a bright red drive tile icon, indicating that it was running short of free disk space.
Drive C isn’t looking very healthy
I was puzzled as I had only recently run CCleaner to collect unused files, old browser caches, un-required file settings and bin them all. I was sure that I had over 13 GB of free space.
TreeSize Free
I turned to TreeSize Free to help me identify what was taking up so much space. I first blogged about TreeSize Free in 2011 in a post called My top free Windows 7 add-ons.
Once installed, all you do is right-click a folder (or drive), select TreeSize Free from the context menu and after running for a moment the application will tell you how large that folder and all its sub-folders are.
This is what it looks like.
TreeSize shows me that I have 5.4 GB of music in the Amazon Music directory
What I learned the other day was that four items were taking up the most space:
Windows 8.1 start screen (click to view full size)
I was reading about the anticipated announcement of the next version of Microsoft Windows, which some are speculating may not even be called ‘Windows’.
I have to say that I really like Windows 8 and 8.1. I especially like the new start screen, particularly the way you can customize it to show only those applications you use most, grouped and named how you want them, in four sizes.
Above is a screenshot of my Windows 8.1 start screen. Setting it up like this has meant that I now have very few items pinned to the taskbar (Windows Explorer, eM Client, Todoist, Safe In Cloud, TED notepad, and Google Chrome)…
My minimalist Windows 8.1 taskbar
…and absolutely nothing on the desktop.
My Windows 8.1 desktop showing no icons at all. (Click for full size)
Over the last month I’ve slowly begun exploring Node.js and so far I’m really liking what I’m seeing.
In a nutshell, Node.js (or simply Node) allows you to write server-side JavaScript. In other words, until now JavaScript is normally written to be run within a web browser, on a web page. Node instead allows you to write JavaScript applications that run outside the browser or via the command line.
Node uses Google Chrome’s JavaScript engine, called V8. Perfect if you are used to writing JavaScript for your browser.
This means that you can now write applications, or ‘modules’ that can do stuff outside the scope of a web browser. For example, you could write a simple web server in Node or — and this is what I want to use it for — you could write modules to manipulate web code and automate certain processes related to web development.
Installing Node.js
Installation on Windows 8 could not have been any more straight forward:
Click the “install” button to download the installer.
Run the installer (make sure you tell the installer to add references to your PATH system variables).
Reboot your PC.
Er…
That’s it!
Command line
Almost everything you do with Node is via a command line. You can use either the standard Windows cmd.exe or Windows PowerShell (or, indeed, any other command line interpreter (CLI) you may have installed).
To use the standard Windows command line:
Press Win + R (for Run)
Type: CMD
Click OK
Checking that Node is installed is as simple as opening a command line and typing:
node --version
Hit enter and you’ll get a result, something like:
v0.10.5
Node Package Manager
One of the great things about the Node installer is that it automatically installs the Node Package Manager. This makes it much easier to install additional applications to extend Node’s capabilities.
Again, you can check the version of NPM by typing the following into your CLI:
npm version
You’ll get an answer, returned as a JSON object:
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{http_parser:'1.0',
node:'0.10.5',
v8:'3.14.5.8',
ares:'1.9.0-DEV',
uv:'0.10.5',
zlib:'1.2.3',
modules:'11',
openssl:'1.0.1e',
npm:'1.2.18'}
To find out what packages are installed enter the following into your CLI:
npm ls
The result will be formatted as a directory structure, like this:
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C:\Users\Gareth
├──cssmin@0.4.1
└──n@1.1.0
Obviously, to find out which globally-installed packages are available use the global flag:
npm ls -g
The first application/module that I want to investigate in depth is the CSS pre-processor Less which is used by the Bootstrap project. I will no doubt report back.
The Windows RT upgrade (for Surface tablets) was removed from the app store until they could figure out what was going on. Microsoft released a “recovery image” yesterday to try to address the issue. Time will tell if it has worked, I can’t see past the search engine results noise of it having been removed.
The Windows 8.1 upgrade disappeared from my Windows 8 store for a day or two as well, but re-appeared last night. I’m still not going to try to upgrade again until I know for sure that it will work.
Windows 8
Windows 8.1 was meant to address some of the criticisms of the original Windows 8 release, particularly the removal of the Windows start button and that Windows 8 boots to the new Modern/Metro UI start screen, rather than to the desktop.
I have to say that I have been a huge fan of Windows 8 since the beta. I had the beta installed on my laptop right until the RTM edition was launched. Since then I’ve defended Windows 8 to everyone and anyone.
Windows 8 has been, by far, the fastest, most stable, most secure version of Windows I’ve used (since my standalone, not-connected-to-the-internet version of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the mid-90s). My desktop PC boots up and is working within about 20-30 seconds. Compare that with my Windows 7 Dell beast of a PC at work which can take about 10 minutes to start up and become fully responsive.
Start button
As for those two criticisms about the lack of start button and not booting directly to the desktop, well Start8 from Stardock (USD $4.99) addresses both those issues.
Start8 gives me back my start button and Windows 7-like start menu
Firmly ticked is the configuration option in Start8 that reads “Automatically go to the Desktop when I sign in“.
I rarely use any of the Metro UI applications (occasionally TV Catch-up, the Steam tile app, and a couple of games with the boys) so it makes sense for me to jump straight to the desktop. This application saves me a click.
To be honest I installed Start8 mostly to make the PC more accessible to my wife Jane, who uses it occasionally. I didn’t want her to have to bother with the convoluted Windows 8 nonsense of Win+C > Settings > Power > Shut down, or Win+C > Settings > Control Panel to access the Control Panel. I reality though, I use those features most.
Start screen
I also have to confess that I really like the Windows 8 start screen. My grumble about the traditional Start menu in XP, Vista, 7 is that it’s a mess. It lists everything that is installed and gives everything equal status.
The Windows 8 start screen allows me to customise it for my own needs, my own priorities.
And if I want to see everything: Win + Q takes me there.
I can pin to the taskbar those applications that I use most frequently, the rest I can pin to the start screen and arrange into named groups. It’s so easy my four year old boys can use it.
The Windows 8 start screen on my desktop PC.
I used another paid-for application from Startdock to customize the background of my start screen: Decor8 (USD $4.99).
A desktop-centric Windows 8 PC
This gives me the best of both worlds: the speed and stability of Windows 8 coupled with the desktop-centric focus of Windows 7.
In each version of Windows that I’ve used I’ve tweaked it and wrestled with its user-interface to give me the experience that works for me. With Windows 3.11 I used Calmira, in Windows 98 it was power toys and TweakUI, in XP I created my own toolbars. Why should this operating system be any different? Surely that’s one of the beauties of Windows.
I really don’t understand these grumbles of “I hate Windows 8 and the Modern/Metro UI!” To be honest, I don’t notice the juxtaposition of desktop vs Modern/Metro UI much. I ignore most of it. I don’t have a touch screen, I have all the Windows desktop applications that I need and only occasionally dabble with the odd Modern/Metro app. And Start8 and Decor8 allow me to quickly tweak the rest
Windows 8.1
And so back to Windows 8.1. I would rather like to upgrade sometime soon.
I tried it on Friday.
It all seemed to be going well until the second boot when it halted the screen that Windows 8 shows when it’s booting up. The little spinner just kept on spinning… for about 30 minutes. So I rebooted the PC… and it did the same until it quickly flashed up a blue screen of death (BSOD) and about 10 minutes later returned me to Windows 8 and a message similar to this one but with error code 0xC1900101 – 0x40017.
Couldn’t update to Windows 8.1
I’ve been closely following, and contributing to the thread on the Microsoft Community. People have had limited success it would appear with certain workarounds working for some but not others: uninstall graphics card drivers, uninstall SteelSeries Engine software, unplug everything, etc.
I have a SteelSeries mouse. I could uninstall it and try the upgrade again, but do you know what? It’s 2013. Why should I have to? Modern operating systems should just work and upgrade without any kind of hardcore hardware geekery.
I’m going to wait until either Microsoft have figured out a way for the operating system to work around or quietly remove incompatible device drivers or until Steel Series have made their drivers compatible with Windows 8.1. Which in my opinion they should have done by now.
Windows 8.1 was code-named “Blue”. It looks like they omitted “…Screen of Death” at the end of it.
Disappointing, and at a time when Microsoft is fighting to stay relevant this seems to me to be a terrible blow to its reputation. As I said, I’ve been almost evangelical about the stability and reliability of Windows 8. I’m not at all confident about upgrading to 8.1 now. That’s not a good thing.
In a few weeks time I’ll be migrating my data to a new PC and since my two older boys, twins Reuben and Joshua, love playing
LEGO Star Wars I & II: The Complete Saga
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
LEGO The Lord of the Rings
I was keen to make sure I knew how to reliably transfer their current saved games to the new computer when it arrived.
Current v future setups
My current PC setup sees me dual booting between Windows 8 Professional 64-bit (on C:) and Windows 7 Professional 32-bit (on D:).
The first partition is my main day-to-day setup for web development, email, writing, image editing, sound recording, etc. The second is simply known as “the games computer”: it has a very clean installation of Windows 7 with only the essential drivers installed plus a few games.
I’ve yet to decide exactly how to configure my new PC, but I expect that I’ll drop the dual boot and simply run everything under Windows 8 Pro 64-bit.
So over the last couple of days I’ve installed these three favourite games of the boys and trialled copying the saved games over. And I’m delighted to report that it worked.
Process
What I did was:
Back-up the files (as detailed below) on my Windows 7 installation.
Install each game on my Windows 8 installation.
Run the game, so that it could create new save locations.
Back-up the default save location files.
Overwrite the Windows 8 save location files with the ones I’d backed-up from Windows 7.
And it worked!
LEGO Star Wars I & II: The Complete Saga
Here is the directory that I found all the files that I needed to copy, where {USER} is the name of your Windows Vista, 7 or 8 account:
C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Local\Lucasarts\LEGO Star Wars - The Complete Saga\
It contained the following directory and files, as we had used only one save slot:
\SavedGames
\SaveGame0.LEGO Star Wars - The Complete Saga_SavedGame
\Mappings.dat
\pcconfig.txt
As far as I can tell the SaveGame0.LEGO Star Wars - The Complete Saga_SavedGame file stores the actual game progress: characters unlocked, canisters found, bonus levels accessed, etc; Mappings.dat stores any customisations made to keyboard and gamepad controls; and pcconfig.txt stores information such as screen resolution, graphics and sound customisations.
It contained the following directory and files again we had used only one save slot:
\CachedShaders
(1,100 files with hex address filenames, e.g. 0x00ae4b5d.shader)
\SavedGames
\Slot1
\GAME1.LEGOStarWarsIIISaveGameData
\Mappings.dat
\pcconfig.txt
I didn’t copy over the CachedShaders files, but I let the game build the cache again afresh. The other two files were the same as above: games controls plus video and sound configurations.
LEGO The Lord of the Rings
Lastly, I copied over our progress in the Lord of the Rings by access these files:
C:\Users\Games\AppData\Roaming\Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment\LEGO The Lord of the Rings\
which consisted of these files:
\CachedShaders
(278 files with hex address filenames plus .shader, .pcode and .vcode suffixes)
\SavedGames
\Slot1
\game1.legothelordoftheringssavegamedata
\Slot4
game1.legothelordoftheringssavegamedata
\Mappings.dat
\pcconfig.txt
Again, I didn’t copy over the CachedShaders files, but I let the game build the cache again afresh. The other two files were the same as above: games controls plus video and sound configurations.
