Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 May 16

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May 16[edit]

what software may I have deinstalled with these symptoms?[edit]

I seem to have inadvertently deleted a software that is now missing on my Windows 7 computer. The symptoms so far:

  • I can't access internet via WLAN anymore: My computer connects to a network, but doesn't have internet. I'm using Intel Proset, and I've let it "repair" itself... but Windows keeps telling me about an access problem.
  • Microsoft Office file extensions are not linked to Office anymore although Office is still installed.
  • The display of "Programs and Features" (-> Control Panel) was changed to a display of icons... and when I changed to "details", I only got the name and version (?) of the files. (Just now I found it's changed back to "Name / Publisher / Installed On / Size / Version".)

Friday night I was deinstalling unwanted programs... and I'm afraid I've inadvertently deinstalled something that was quite wanted. How silly... (And before someone asks: I've recently backed up most of my files... but unfortunately I haven't restored a previous version of the operating system or other software...)

Any tips as to which program I may have deinstalled (or whatever other problem there may be)? Thanks a lot in advance! (And thanks for explaining it in a way that someone who's just deinstalled some critical software without noticing it on time can follow you ;)) Thanks for answering (talk) 07:03, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Right click on the relevant folders and choose: "Restore previous version." --AboutFace 22 (talk) 13:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • You can try this to try to determine what you removed.
I have a hard time believing all the symptoms you describe come from the same source. I would hazard a wild guess that the first symptom (internet connectivity) is the root cause, and the "repair" option caused the other two (autorepair tools will try all kinds of weird option-changing stuff just in case), but I would not bet any money on it. The internet problem may be because you uninstalled the driver for the network card. If so, you may be able to re-download it from the internet (on another device, then USB transfer) and re-install it, but obviously you should be careful when executing downloaded files. TigraanClick here to contact me 13:01, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Scrapping a domain[edit]

What's the best way to find all links in a domain? For example, in the domain <target>.com, how can I find all links in the form /docs/*/<name>.pdf files? --Clipname (talk) 19:19, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Write or purchase a Web crawler. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:45, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
wget has some basic web crawler functionality. Very handy if you happen to have a linux/unix/mac system and are comfortable with simple command line scripting.
I hesitate to recommend it though, because if you're not comfortable with simple command line scripting it's probably not the tool for you. ApLundell (talk) 20:23, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
However it should be noted that crawlers find only pages that are linked to by other other pages. In general it's not possible to find isolated pages that are not linked to by other pages. CodeTalker (talk) 23:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Also consider that learning regexps will be of help here. --Hofhof (talk) 23:15, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
CodeTalker, you are correct about the web crawlers not finding pages that aren't linked. I've seen someone use a dictionary attack to find pages that weren't linked (I seem to recall a legal case where a stock broker did so to find press releases before they were actually released, to gain insider information) by composing possible page names and paths based on patterns used in linked pages. But it's prohibitively inefficient if, for example, the site uses descriptive names for news articles or blog posts. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, I'm pretty sure if you genuinely want all links, and can't be sure that everything follows a standard, or they do but the standard is complicated enough, you could do calculations showing that even with a very large number of connections a second, you'll basically never come even close to guaranteeing you've found all. More generally, unless you have a bot net, you may find the number of connections or number of attempts you can make is actually quite small before you get blocked. From my limited experience and reading, many administrators are quite happy and quick to block excessive automated queries (with a very low bar for excessive), no matter how well you follow robots.txt etc, from unknown bots. (Google etc are treated different.) Even with a botnet, there's a decent chance someone is going to notice what's happening and make some attempts to block you. Nil Einne (talk) 06:31, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

.apk[edit]

1) I’m looking for something better than “Xperia Calendar” (consisting “Tasks” section) as it does not have the ‘0 minutes’ “Reminder” facility. Could you refer me to something good please? 116.58.202.33 (talk) 23:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

2) Could you refer me to some, a good “Calendar”, “Tasks” and a “Notes” ‘‘.apk’’ file from “Google Play Store” please? 116.58.202.33 (talk) 23:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are many calendar apps. Here is a rundown of some of the better ones. ApLundell (talk) 16:23, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]