Comments for Shareware Shopper

Comment on VISTA: How do you run a program before the logon screen appears.? by Ron

Ron — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:21:59 +0000

Have you thought about writing the program and then editing the boot.ini file so it is set to run where you want it to in the lineup? Just an idea. may not work. Ron
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Comment on VISTA: How do you run a program before the logon screen appears.? by Ken B

Ken B — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:44:59 +0000

No user program will run on Windows before the user logs in. The only programs that will run prior to login are services, and writing services do not qualify as a "simple task".

As for cost, I believe you can write services using free C compilers, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio Express (see URL below). (I know that the full Visual Studio can do so, as I have done it. I have not tried the express version to see if it can do this.) But, to keep it "free", you will need to write it yourself. (And I learned how to write services from a book, which I paid for. I do not know if there are free tutorials on this.)

- kb -
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37+ years of programming experience.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vc/

Comment on VISTA: How do you run a program before the logon screen appears.? by Jim Maryland

Jim Maryland — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:24:59 +0000

Don't see how DOS can check a service status (can start/stop them, but don't see a query option). If you do find something, you could run it as a Scheduled Task ans set it to run "When my computer starts" and just poll the service and then alert you to when it starts. You may look at Visual Studio Express editions to see how easily you can write an application to interrogate a service. If you go that far though, might as well write a service that is dependent on the RAID service and then have it perform the notification.
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Comment on How can i put a dull pic of a person in a beach pic without making it look fake ? Any shareware software,trick by a58392

a58392 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:01:59 +0000

Hi, a friend recommended the program from google, Picasa, I wish he’d told me before,
it’s amazing what I can do with it in just an hours of fiddling, for a free program this is tops, you can get it from here:
http://www.sleekbytes.com/search_the_web_with_google.htm
if it helps please remember me cheers and thanks for the 2 points!
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Comment on VISTA: How do you run a program before the logon screen appears.? by Jason Kent

Jason Kent — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:46:59 +0000

Try to find a way to do this with a windows service.
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Comment on How can i put a dull pic of a person in a beach pic without making it look fake ? Any shareware software,trick by freedomhammer

freedomhammer — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:45:59 +0000

In Photoshop there are many tools for controlling the levels, brightness, contrast, sharpness and gamma, as well as hue and saturation. By making careful adjustments in all of these you can get just about anything to blend in nicely if there is enough color information in the original. If your old pic is very soft and lacking in detail there’s not too much you can do since you can only work with what is there, not what is not. But you should be able to get the color, contrast and brightness to match and that will help a lot. Another problem you might have is the shadows and lighting; if the lighting in the original was radically different, from the left instead of the right, you can always flip the image, but if the background has hard lighting and the old pic has soft lighting, again you are somewhat stuck. You can go in close and work on a pixel-by-pixel level and try to clean things up that way, but it is a lot of work, and if the image information is just not there it could look fake unless you are a really good artist.

You can get it fairly close quite quickly just with basic controls, but after that you are talking about reconstructing things that are not there, and that’s a different ball game.

Photoshop also has a number of "artistic" filters that allow you to change the look of an image to approach the look of an oil painting on canvas, linen, etc. You can do just about anything in Photoshop, and anyone who says it is limited probably has some limited version rather than the full version. (My first version of Photoshop was an LE edition which came with a scanner.)
References :
Pure mental supremacy and supreme intelligence.

No animals or plants were harmed in the answering of this question. Any similarity with any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintended.

This answer contains a substance known by the state of California to cause excessive moronic stupidity. Use with adequate ventilation.

Comment on How can i put a dull pic of a person in a beach pic without making it look fake ? Any shareware software,trick by Tao Barbie™

Tao Barbie™ — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:19:59 +0000

What you are asking can be done, but it takes practice and a good program. I prefer Paint Shop Pro or Corel and consider Photoshop to be limited. I wish you could forward the photos to me. There are many things to consider. You must balance the brightness, contrast, gamma, hue, saturation, grain, texture, and consider the direction of light and shadow, depth of highlight, midtone, and shadow, plus many other factors. It will be difficult to clean up the old photo so it matches the new. You can sharpen it some, but may also need to add some noise to the new photo or otherwise adjust it down a little. To someone with experience, your project would be fun. You can get free demos of my preferred graphics programs at http://corel.com but unless you are experienced with them, it won’t help. You might find someone at your local university to do it for you. Kinkos can do it too. It might be pricey.
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Comment on How do I convert a mp3 file to a midi file without purchasing software? Is there a shareware program out there by Westwood

Westwood — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:08:59 +0000

yeah there is bound to be freeware or shareware. do a search on Yahoo! to find some
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Comment on VISTA: How do you run a program before the logon screen appears.? by /Tony/ - Programming Guru

/*Tony*/ - Programming Guru — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:06:59 +0000

Let me quote something for you.

"Don’t want to have to pay for any shareware to do this seemingly simple task."
Seemingly, key word.
Nothing to do with programming is simple; excluding a few small languages no one honestly cares about ^-^.

To answer your question, I don’t believe there is any freeware that does this. Batch programming certainly won’t, or atleast to my knowledge.
In this economy, nothing is free unless useless or almost useless.
IF I come across this answer in the form of a code or program that’s actually free, I’ll contact you (as I do with every person I answer to).
Good luck, sorry fi this didn’t help you, congrats if it did.
-Tony
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Comment on How can i put a dull pic of a person in a beach pic without making it look fake ? Any shareware software,trick by MeLissa

MeLissa — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:02:59 +0000

photoshop
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