Computing desk
< November 16	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	November 18 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 17[edit]

How to make a "Matrix-Style" rain with specific letters?[edit]

I have followed these instructions and made my own Matrix-style rain. However, is there a way to modify these instructions so that only the letter A, C, T, G are falling? 98.27.247.86 (talk) 06:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind! Solved it myself using this! 98.27.247.86 (talk) 06:24, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Math Symbols[edit]

At this post I'm just seeing empty boxes instead of the symbols under discussion. What do I need to configure to change that in Windows7? Rojomoke (talk) 07:46, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What is your browser? In Windows Vista I see the symbol in Firefox but not in IE9 or Google Chrome. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Same here. Firefox works but Chrome does not. Dismas|^(talk) 12:01, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's very likely a question of the browser having a font that supports that symbol. Looie496 (talk) 16:23, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know much about Win7, but suspect it is a font issue. The symbol is an obscure Unicode character, so you would need a Unicode font that has glyphs for these myriad codepoints. My chrome on Linux shows the character, but chrome on my iPad does not. --Mark viking (talk) 16:32, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK thanks. I'm using Chrome. Rojomoke (talk) 17:02, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chrome uses the operating system's fonts, and standard Windows fonts have poor Unicode support (try to make that character appear in Notepad, not gonna happen). Hence the square boxes for characters that Windows doesn't have. Firefox also uses the operating system's fonts, but when the OS font is missing characters, Firefox has a built-in font that it uses to replace the missing characters. 88.112.41.6 (talk) 21:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether Firefox has any fonts built in, but on my Win7 machine Firefox seems to get that character from Segoe UI Symbols, which is a standard Windows font (see also this thread). It doesn't show up in Chrome or in Notepad unless I change the text font to Segoe UI Symbols. Chrome and Windows itself do use fallback fonts for missing glyphs, but apparently don't try as hard as Firefox. -- BenRG (talk) 00:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I use two machines, IE10 on Win7 displays the 'angles' glyph properly, IE8 on WinXP shows empty rectangle instead. I've checked it with Wordpad on Win7 and found the character properly represented in three fonts: Cambria, Cambria Math and Segoe UI Symbol. --CiaPan (talk) 07:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot partition hard disk[edit]

My hard disk has two partitions, one for Mac OS X and one for Windows. I was trying to divide the OS X partition into two.

Partition failed

Partition failed with the error:

Couldn't modify partition map because file system verification failed.

Here is what Disk Utility logs when I try First Aid → Repair Disk:

Verifying and repairing partition map for “TOSHIBA MK3265GSXF Media”
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Adjusting partition map to fit whole disk as required
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Checking booter partitions
Checking booter partition disk0s3
Checking file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Recovery HD appears to be OK.
Volume repair complete.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
Reviewing boot support loaders
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
Updating Windows boot.ini files as required
The partition map appears to be OK

--Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 14:55, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Very often the most effective way of solving a problem that you don't understand is to google for the error message. In this case doing so takes me directly to http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/05/fix-partition-failed-error-mac/, which gives instructions for fixing it. Whether they will work, I don't know. Looie496 (talk) 16:21, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of using a general purpose web search engine, I find that I get better results if I head to the manufacturer's support website first. In this case, if you go to http://support.apple.com and enter "partition failed" in the help query prompt, you get many useful links, including the the BootCamp setup guide, which is an authoritative and official help guide that walks you through some common troubleshooting steps. There's an entire section of the manual entitled "if you have problems creating a partition." Nimur (talk) 23:25, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Um, the link I gave explains exactly what to do to solve the exact problem described here, with nothing extraneous. Looie496 (talk) 00:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]