Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 January 18

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January 18

Reviving dead torrents

I've been trying to download a "semi-dead" torrent on BitTorrent for a couple of days now. 404 MB out of the 5.57 GB size 320 kbps discography has been downloaded and I've been waiting for several days for the rest to finish downloading. No progress.... The torrent is only several years old by the way. I read that adding trackers would help bring back to life a dead torrent by adding seeds. I've tried to find online and add more trackers, but that didn't work for me. Is there any way that my torrent can be revived? What are some ways to bring a dead torrent back to life? Willminator (talk) 03:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, the general rule for torrents is that they're useless or pointless if there aren't any seeds supplying the download. Blake Gripling (talk) 06:01, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Right, without uploaders there is no downloading. But the OP is asking how to find more seeds, and indeed, adding trackers is one possible solution for that. Sometimes they are dead, so there is no work-around here. Maybe try another torrent with the same name. Possibly someone created a torrent of the same medium, maybe with a lower quality, but more seeds. BTW, several years old is a lot of time when it comes down to the internet. OsmanRF34 (talk) 14:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A tracker keeps, er, track of who is downloading and hosting (leeching/seeding) a torrent. If nobody is seeding, the odds are usually very low that the pieces of the torrent held by the leechers add up to form a whole. Adding more trackers looks at your peers (whether seeders or leechers) and checks to see if their torrent has other trackers associated with it (if you look through properties, etc. of a particular torrent you'll likely see it's associated with several). If the new trackers have been keeping track of seeders the original wasn't aware of, then great! But if that doesn't work -- and assuming your router isn't filtering out important ports -- you're kind of out of luck unless one of those seeders appears (but it's not unheard of). As OsmanRF34 points out, there are often multiple torrents with similar names associated with the same index/tracker. This is good for providing options, but bad because even if two are functionally identical, searching for trackers for one won't pull in those downloading/seeding the other. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  14:41, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Your best bet is probably to ask the band who's music it is to seed it. If they made a torrent, they must have been interested in distributing it in that fashion at one stage so maybe they still are.

If it's not the band itself that's doing it, but it some sort of public domain or creative commons or authorised bootleg recordings or similar content, you can try looking at forums where there's interest in this sort of thing (archive.org may be a decent bet in general but there are likely specialised forums depending on what precisely the material is) and seeing if you can find someone with the content able to seed. In particular, see if you can find the person who originally contributed the content and where they first released it, there's often only one or a few places.

Of course if you're downloading copyright violating stuff, you may be SOL since contributors of such material are often intentionally difficult to find.

Nil Einne (talk) 21:39, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Track changes

Is there a Track Changes option in Libre Office for Linux? KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 10:07, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

If you don't get an answer here this is their Q&A help forum.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:26, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

edit->changes->record and edit->changes->show -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:09, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Public Parsoid server ?

Hi,
I would like to know if the Wikimedia foundation shares its Parsoid server with the public, and if a user can log in from my private wikimedia board to the server.
I would like to know the details of the connection too.

Google maps light ?

When, in Google Chrome on Windows 7, 32-bit, I type a restaurant name as a general Google search term, it shows me a nice little preview map indicating the locations of that chain in my area. So far so food. Next I pick on the little map in the hopes of getting a full-sized map of the same thing, where I can zoom in and drag to find the names of local streets etc. This is where it all goes bad. Instead of what I want, I get a map showing every "point of interest" in the area, with pop-ups listing reviews of the restaurant, offering to recommend bicycle routes, etc. Even with nothing else running on my PC, this can take it down to a crawl. So, what's the easiest way to get what I want, just a larger version of the preview map, without all the bloatware ? StuRat (talk) 18:36, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: I resorted to entering the address in Yahoo Maps. Any other suggestions ? StuRat (talk) 22:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Setting mode page ???

This is the scoop. I have latest the UltraISO. I just tried to burn a DVD with it. It gives me this error: "DVD-R/RW media requires setting mode page to use DAO writing." Farfetched: there is a program "mode" in Windows\System32. I ran it but it does not seem to be relevant at all. It gives COM1, COM2 and CON parameters, nothing else. What is the meaning of it? Thanks. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 18:37, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

It is possible that the cryptic message simply meant that the DVD was not formatted. Once I formatted the disk the message disappeared. When I do System restoration disk the backup itself formats the disk, so with UltraISO I was under the impression it would do the same. --AboutFace 22 (talk) 20:07, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

DAO means disk-at-once, and the "mode page" is a SCSI mode page, I assume (your drive uses ATAPI, which is SCSI over ATA). If it was a DVD±RW and by formatting you mean erasing, then the error message is probably nonsense resulting from UltraISO misinterpreting an error code from the DVD drive. It is possible to format a DVD±RW disc (by writing a blank UDF filesystem to which files can later be added), but that probably isn't what you're doing. -- BenRG (talk) 00:23, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

OutfoxTV still listed in System Configuration Startup despite removal

hello, I was looking thru the Startup files in System Configuration (msconfig) and I saw "OutfoxTV" listed screenshot. I have never seen this before, and I assume it came from something I downloaded from CNET for free. Anyway, I couldn't find OutfoxTV at all on my computer, not even where it was listed as being (Program Files\OutfoxTV, which didn't exist). So I downloaded it, installed and removed it, then restarted my computer but it still shows up in System Config. I found it in HKCU and removed it with RegEdit, restarted, but it still shows up. Is it safe to say it'll be in the Startup list forever, even though I can't find it on my computer?Bananas9 (talk) 20:50, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

AutoRuns should help. --  Gadget850 ^talk 12:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

If you delete it from the registry using regedit (at the branch indicated in the location column of msconfig) and it then reappears, something else is putting it back. Maybe it is one of the other startup programs, but since you don't recall installing it in the first place, it is quite possibly malware which snuck it onto your PC in the first place and now refuses to let you delete it. Astronaut (talk) 23:57, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I took a little more time to Google this. This appears to be malware. Here is a removal guide. --  Gadget850 ^talk 01:10, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Chrome Media Settings

Until recently, on going to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2 and clicking "Listen Live", a separate window appeared with the radio program streaming in it. Recently this changed so that the new window downloads a PLS file, which I then have to listen to with an external media player.
This is only happening in Chrome, so I assume I've changed a setting somehow. Can anyone tell me how to change it back?
Thanks, Rojomoke (talk) 23:20, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Apparently this is a known problem that the BBC are looking into. Thanks everyone for all your help. Rojomoke (talk) 10:54, 31 January 2014 (UTC)