Does anyone else absolutely hate, hate, hate those transparent file identifiers at the tops of windows?

This might help if you are hating what I think you hate.

What?

If I said that sort of thing, I would say god bless you @johnpowell

Immediately I will do that!!!!
xxxxooooxxxx

IT WORKED, ALTHOUGH THE STEPS WERE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT. YAY!

Yes, they are impossible for me to read. And I hate the way Windows 7 causes searh inputs to turn blue with blue text when you type in them. It makes the text completely unreadable to y eyes. When I want to refine my searhc, I can’t just insert a word here or there because I can’t see where the cursor is. And often I type a new search only to discover the old one is appended to the end of it and I end up with useless results.

@johnpowell Thanks for the link. I set it to high contrast black and white, and that cleared up both issues while speeding up display. WooHoo!

@ETpro I can’t get the Windows 7 search to work at all. And I think I indexed everything . . .
Oh bring back the little doggie!

And it always wants to “fix” problems on my external data drives and I am terrified to let it touch anything.

Upgrades are . . . upgrades???

@anartist Up[grades are often nothing more than enforced revenue producers.

@ETpro well said!

@ETpro @johnpowell This is the message that scares the shit out of me:
http://www.anartist.com/images/arrrggghh.jpg

even scarier—you need to format the disk in drive F before you use it.
Format now?
I was so blown away I closed the box before screen-grabbing it?
What could be wrong with this brand new machine and why does it hate my disks?

@anartist Definitely avoid formatting the drive. That will wipe out all exosting data on it. If there are problems accessing files on it, then chkdsk f: /f, which is what Windows is suggesting in the screen capture you posted, will read the disk and fix errors it finds. If there are missing sectors within a file, that means the file will be lost. It will preserve data it is able to read.

If the disk is becoming flaky, then it is only a matter of time before it fails completely. If the data on it is not viotal, I’d let Windows do as suggested. If it is vital, a data recovery company can retreive data even from damaged media or media that’s been erased. But expect to pay a huge fee for data recovery if the disk has any serious problems on it.

silly @ETpro I knew not to format. I was just petrified that Windows 7 was offering it as an option for a drive I had been using all evening and it made me further suspicious of previous message http://www.anartist.com/images/arrrggghh.jpg

There was never anything wrong with F before it met Windows 7. Is it having compatibility issues that older safer mechanisms such as you suggest—chkdsk—should be pointed to by [what] command screen?

I think I found command.com or equivalent on this damned OS. Proceed from there?

You can launch a DOS command prompt in Win 7 by clicking Start in the lower left and in the Search box immediately above it, enter cmd.exe and then hit search. THere are other ways, but that’s the most direct.

@ETpro Thank you again.
can you tell me how to make SEARCH work in Windows 7 too—oh man of magic?
It always returns no results nothing found—was it something I said????

Am I safest with this win7 beastie trying to get as close to earlier workings as possible??

@anartist Search that I mentioned using in the lower left searches for applications. It’s not like a GOogle or Bing search of the internet, or a Word Processor search for a word or phrase within a file.

You can search the entire hard drive. Click Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> Windows Explorer. Navigate to the folder/s you want to search. There is a search input at the upper right that works for simple word or phrase searches. Click the down arrow to the right of it to set custom search parameters and filters.

Yes, the search that replaced the little brown doggie, my search companion [although at one time he could be replaced with Albert Einstein or a host of others]
I refused to leave that search behind even in XP—it was so clear 1. all or part of file name 2. words in file 3 advanced how big is it? when was it last modified, etc???

Why wreck something good like that? I go down to that little search window and can only use keywords and always get back ‘nothing matches your search’

I’ll try what you have suggested
[unless I can rescue the doggie from the pound and give him a new home on Windows 7]