Grahphire2 the hard way

[KevinBE]

Well, I have had an interesting first experience with my new Graphire2 tablet. I learned the hard way not to try to navigate Windows with it! Or at least wait until I am much better at controling it. I accidentally let it slip down to the task bar which brought up Explorer and a slip of the wrist deleted my downloads directory. This happened so fast that I didn't know the deletion had happened until I tried to download the driver updates from Wacom and tried to destination directory. The whole downloads directory was gone. Wow, not to worry though the files were in the recycle bin, right? Wrong! I don't know how but the grouping of about 50 directories and files were simply gone for good. It could have been worse, I really lost nothing important but what if it had slipped on down to my current projects directory. I would have been livid. What a lesson to learn.

[Ed_L]

Wow Kevin! I've never heard of anything like that. Sorry to hear about your misfortune. I don't know how that could happen.

Ed

[KevinBE]

Hi Ed, I guess I experienced the power of "drag & drop". I just wish I knew exactly what happened and where the files went. Whatever happened it has caused a problem with Windows. If I bring up explorer and search on the word "download" explorer crashes. I'm going to have to reload Windows sooner than I had planned. Aren't PC's fun?

[CJ Swartz]

(whimpering at the thought of something this bad happening to anyone I know) I would have thought they would end up in the recycle bin also. Have you tried Find -> Files or Folders or is that what you used already? (I'm a hopeful optimist, especially when it comes to losing a lot of work.)

[KevinBE]

Hi CJ, yes I have tried to search for it. Explorer crashes everytime I do. It's no big loss, I will simply have to re-download the files as I need them. I don't know why I keep all those files anyway. I have a some of them backed up on the other drive but most of those are older. I didn't lose anything important. The potential is what is scarry. This isn't the fault of the tablet, it's my fault. It could have as easily happened with the mouse. I forget how powerful the drag&drop feature is. Guess that's why I don't use it much

[jeaniesa]

Kevin,

What OS are you running? And does Explorer crash only when you look for your Download folder - or when you search for anything?

If you are running W2K or WXP, try logging in as a different user and see if you can search without Explorer crashing. (Speaking from experience here.)

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

Hi Jeanie. I am running XP Pro. Explorer only crashes when I search on the word "download". I have tried searching on different words and it executes normally and finds what I am seraching for. There must be a damaged reference to those missing directories in the partition table somewhere. Scandisk completes with no errors and I was able to create a new directory named "Downloads" in the exact location where the old directory was with no problems. Real strange but I'm not worried about it.

This is the third time I have had problems with file courption with this load of XP. I must have happened early after I loaded this drive because I have restored my Powerquest image backup twice and the incidents keep happening. This tells me that the problem initially began prior to this backup. Only one thing to do, reload from scratch.

I had planned to reload in a couple of weeks anyway. I am going to change motherboard and hard drives as part of my home automation server upgrade. The server will be getting the hand-me-downs from my primary PC. I am going to bring this PC back up with an IDE Raid array, Raid 0+1 if I can afford the 4 hard drives necessary to pull it off. I feel the need for speed!

[jeaniesa]

You may still be able to search for Downloads by logging in as a different user. Since you're going to be reinstalling anyway, if you need to create a new user, do that. You might be pleasantly surprised. It's worth a shot anyway.

Jeanie

[KevinBE]

Well Jeanie, your idea produced some results. I logged in as administrator and performed the search. Just before it crashed I saw where my files were. Since this is the third time I have had curruption in this directory structure I have deleted my old user account and all files and directories associated with that user. Hopefully I didn't transfer the problem when I copied the files to their new location. Thanks for suggesting that. Now maybe I can run for a week or two until I get the new hardware in.

I figured that the files were still on the hard drive but without the search capability it was going to be a long process to locate them.

[G. Couch]

If you guy's do not mind, I am going to break off part of this thread and send it to the software forum...Lot's of interesting info here that might get missed under the Graphire heading.


I split the rest of this thread off to the Software forum - here

[Stephen M]

Hi Chuck, the great thing about the software which drives these devices is that you can disable buttons that you don't like to use (tablet pens or intellimouse side buttons or whatever).

Just head into your Wacom tablet control panel or the MS Intellipoint control panel or whatever and go hunting.

That being said, if you don't use the duobutton on the Wacom pen and it can be removed/replaced then that would also work and make things a bit easier to hold.

The thing I don't like about the MS Intellimouse is that it is too high...after the sleek 'no button' Mac G4 transparent case optical mouse I really like a _low_ profile mouse (but I really hate the first iMac 'hockey puck' round mouse design which was flawed in so many ways). If I recall things correctly, both MS and Apple license their optical mouse technology from HP. <g>

Stephen Marsh.

[KevinBE]

Sorry Greg, guess we did get a little off the original subject.

[G. Couch]

No problem. Off topic is fine to a degree and I would not normally split off a thread unless it really has become a new topic alltogether. There was a lot of good info being shared that many people could miss if it's buried in a thread about the Graphire 2. As Doug states-

We have a continual stream of new users, and if the topic doesn't match the conversation they'll never find it. This does not mean you can't talk about whatever's on your mind. Just if it departs too far from the topic of the thread, start a new thread and label it appropriately.

By the way, like Stephen mentioned, I disabled a lot of my pen's buttons and double click function because I was having the same problems you were. I just use my mouse for navigating and save the tablet for Photoshop but even in Photoshop I disabled the duoswitch since I kept hitting it and changing tools by accident!

[KevinBE]

Thanks Greg, I'ill make those changes myself. I was having trouble trying to use the duoswitch anyway.