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1500 questions
91
votes
9 answers

How can I wipe a broken hard disk drive before sending it back to the manufacturer for maintenance?

The hard drive of my laptop died, the manufacturer wants me to send it so that they can investigate, but I'm concerned that the drive might contain sensitive information. When I say the drive is broken, the drive won't be recognized by my OS…
Brann
  • 1,385
91
votes
9 answers

How can I remap a keyboard key?

One of my laptop's keys has fallen off. Is there any way I can remap another key to serve as that key? I'll 'sacrifice' the other key because I never use it.
Pure.Krome
  • 1,903
91
votes
4 answers

How do I see the XML of my DOCX document?

I want to see my .docx in its pure XML format. Various application like internet browsers and visual studio will open the file up in Word for me. I've also tried renaming the document to .xml extension and it just opens up in notepad showing a bunch…
RoboShop
  • 3,576
91
votes
7 answers

How is the capacity of a harddisk faked?

I was reading about magical Chinese drives. How would this be done? The post talks about a 'looped mode' and comments suggest having a different controller to lie to the OS. I went and bought one of these devices, tried it and it worked as…
Rohan Monga
  • 933
91
votes
7 answers

Why does WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) keep spiking my CPU?

I generally keep my laptop on 24x7, and at the end of the day it's really annoying to have my thighs burnt because over overheating. The overheating seems to be a result of WMI Provider Host (WmiPrvSE.exe) spiking the CPU utilization to 25% every…
Sathyajith Bhat
  • 61,800
91
votes
5 answers

How do I get the size of a Linux or Mac OS X directory from the command-line?

What command do I use to find the size of all the files (recursively) in a Linux or Mac OS X directory?
Daryl Spitzer
  • 8,765
91
votes
4 answers

How do I delete previously entered items from Google Chrome Omnibox?

Chrome's Omnibox keeps sites that I most frequently visit - and this is good. However, one of my most visited pages has its URL changed, and I want to remove this from the Chrome Omnibox suggestions, how can I do so ?
Sathyajith Bhat
  • 61,800
91
votes
9 answers

Hotkey to Mute Mic on Mac OS X?

Is there a hotkey I can use or configure to mute the mic on a 13" MacBook Pro (MPB)? I would prefer an icon or notification to confirm that it is set (even if I need to toggle the option).
wag2639
  • 7,134
91
votes
6 answers

Command to 'gzip' a folder?

I am new to Mac command prompt stuff. How do you create a gzip of a folder in Mac OS X? I was told by a few folks that if you want to create a gzip of a folder you should 'tar' it first and then 'gzip' it. Is this correct?
thndrkiss
  • 1,053
91
votes
4 answers

How to make new file permission inherit from the parent directory?

I have a directory called data. Then I am running a script under the user id 'robot'. robot writes to the data directory and update files inside. The idea is data is open for both me and robot to update. So I setup the permission and owner group…
Wai Yip Tung
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91
votes
6 answers

use of alternation "|" in sed's regex

I am using sed, GNU sed version 4.2.1. I want to use the alternation "|" symbol in a subexpression. For example : echo "blia blib bou blf" | sed 's/bl\(ia|f\)//g' should return " blib bou " but it returns "blia blib bou blf". How can I have the…
Cedric
  • 1,093
91
votes
5 answers

How do I change the language of the Linux subsystem in Windows 10 (WSL)?

After installing Bash in Windows 10 I noted that it is using Swedish in the linux applications. My Windows 10 installation is in English. I have tried to reinstall bash after changing the default input language to english using lxrun /uninstall…
User0
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91
votes
3 answers

How to use 'sed' with piping

I want to replace a string outputted from grep, I have: $ npm info webpack | grep version it outputs me $ version: '2.1.0-beta.12', but I want to have: $ 2.1.0-beta.12 So I think I might achieve that using sed and replace unnecessary substrings.…
Oskar Szura
  • 1,035
90
votes
1 answer

Strange dotless decimal notation of IP address... How does it work?

Earlier today I thought I had a URL in my clipboard, but I actually had four 9 digit integers copied from a spreadsheet, which were identification numbers from a proprietary system. Completely unrelated to the task at hand. I pasted it into Firefox…
beeks
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90
votes
7 answers

How to get back a declined Outlook invitation

I accidentally clicked "decline" on an Outlook invitation and now I can't reverse it -- the event has completely disappeared from my calendar! How can I get back the event invitation and change my "Decline" to "Accept" or "tentative"?
bobobobo
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