Help and Support

[Stan Brown]

Are you asking about the DOS-mode commands, like chkdsk and dir? What
happens when you type "help" in a command console?

net start /?

I was going to post the same advice, but I tried it first and cancelled
my post. I'm on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

Here's why:

<Command window>
[C:] net start /?
The syntax of this command is:

NET START
[service]

</Command window>

And net /? is not much better.

Thank you: you saved me the effort of posting. The syntax is better
than nothing, but it doesn't tell you what the command *does*.

"net start" isn't even listed in Windows 7 Help's Command Overview,
let alone explained.

 

[Stan Brown]

Geez. I never suspected that /? and /help were not synonymous :-(

Like you, I can't imagine why they aren't the same.

Thanks for the completely unexpected info!

+1 -- both to Gene's "never suspected" and to the "thanks"!

 

[Stan Brown]

I know I'm in the minority, but I find the titles of all those "...for
Dummies" books insulting, and I refuse to buy them.

I feel precisely the same way.

And what does it say if you buy one for someone else as a gift!

 

[Char Jackson]

Some of us do, but in vain. I have pretty much given up finding
*anything* in the "help" files in MS Office.

[and Windows 7]

If you ask me, (and you didn't), I think Win 7's Help is much better
than what I had come to expect from Windows Help in previous versions.

 

[Nil]

Threatened? No.

Insulted? yes.

You can call it a "gentle" joke if you wish (and I know that most
people feel the same way you do), but it isn't gentle to me.

Well, OK, if you say so. I have trouble understanding how someone could
possibly take a book title personally, but if you choose to, it's
certainly your prerogative.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:36:55 -0800, Gene E. Bloch

[snip]

I find myself wondering how you know that the publishers are referring
specifically to you when they say "for Dummies".

Strawman! Who said anything about specific?

Just curious.

Well, I expect that he knows that it is possible for something to
insult more than one person.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gordon]

I do get the alleged joke. I do not think that gratuitously
insulting others is really a joke. I believe in courtesy.

Then you are in a minority of one....the "Dummy" range of books are
extremely popular, and not restricted to computing either....
I suggest you lighten up a bit....

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, VanguardLH <[email protected]>
writes:
[]

How is what I said considered bitter? Humans are born and they die.
There are new crops of humans being born every day. They get educated
by those that are older. At the start, everyone is a newbie regarding
any topic. The uneducated will continually exist. That's an
expectation, not the problem. Uneducated that have initiative will
research first and then ask when they've exhausted what avenues of
knowledge they know about. The problem is with the uneducated that LACK
initiative to even try to resolve their own problem.

Of course, you have missed that they are showing initiative by asking
here ... (-:

(Actually, there's probably more to that than is relevant for this
particular discussion, _if_ they've never used newsgroups before. I have
two intelligent friends who only lurk.)

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

I'd recommend http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html, though more at the
other end than the Dummies books. Free, or paid (but only just about
enough to cover overheads) for ones with pictures.
Tangerine here - built from scratch (i. e. properly built with soldering
iron, not plugged together), 1K memory later expanded to 8 (-:
I've bought a few. The main problem, as with other methods, is often
that the information _is_ there, but the term the author uses isn't the
one I think of. The better ones have entries in the index that include
synonyms.

Then why do you keep buying them? If they published them in PDF format
they'd be a lot more useful. But then they wouldn't be able to charge a
fortune for them, would they?

But there'd be less initiative to keep writing them then.

I gave up on computing books ages ago. The only one I found useful was
one which had a practical follow through course on programming with
QBASIC (Oh yes, it WAS that long ago!) with excercises to do at the end
of each chapter which you were supposed to do successfully if you had
understood the course covered in that chapter.
-- choro

I remember QuickC with affection (though more the on-screen programming
system).

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Gordon

Then you are in a minority of one....the "Dummy" range of books are
extremely popular, and not restricted to computing either....
I suggest you lighten up a bit....

As has been evidenced here, more than one.

Personally I don't really mind, because I realise that "Dummy" (not
Dummie!) is used in two ways:

1. idiot, the original (for our purposes) meaning
2. beginner

, and it's the second one I aimed at. I _did_ think it was an unwise
choice when I first saw the series, especially since I think in British
English the second use is somewhat less widely used.

I liked Dan Gookin's sense of humour in one (to Windows, it might have
been, or Word - certainly back in the '98 era) I got my mother, and
fortunately, so did she; I fear my dad would have found it grated. Such
things are very personal; DG got it just right for the two of us.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

On 3/05/2012, VanguardLH posted:
And if Windows 7 has detailed descriptions of the syntax and function
of the command-line commands, I've been unable to find it.
Are you asking about the DOS-mode commands, like chkdsk and dir? What
happens when you type "help" in a command console?


Try getting information on "net start", for instance.
net start /?

I was going to post the same advice, but I tried it first and cancelled
my post. I'm on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

Here's why:

<Command window>
[C:] net start /?
The syntax of this command is:

NET START
[service]

</Command window>

And net /? is not much better.

Try "net start /help". Much better information than just /?, which
only gives syntax. Why MS didn't provide the full help with /? is
anyone's guess...

Geez. I never suspected that /? and /help were not synonymous :-(

Like you, I can't imagine why they aren't the same.

Thanks for the completely unexpected info!

You're welcome.

Another set of helpful resources are the Windows Command Reference help
file (available at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?
id=2632) and the on-line reference http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc754340(v=ws.10).aspx.

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 10:44:05 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
Many don't bother reading the app or OS included help.
Some of us do, but in vain. I have pretty much given up finding
*anything* in the "help" files in MS Office.

[and Windows 7]

If you ask me, (and you didn't), I think Win 7's Help is much better
than what I had come to expect from Windows Help in previous
versions.

Very true, and that is why people often don't even bother looking there.
The point of my original post was to give Help a chance. I often find
answers to questions posted here readily available in Help and Support.
For example,

Recent question:
How do you set Windows 7 to defrag automatically?

My answer:
Open Help and Support and search for "defrag." Item 3 is "Schedule Disk
Defragmenter to run regularly."

 

[Ken Blake]

I find myself wondering how you know that the publishers are referring
specifically to you when they say "for Dummies".

No, I didn't suggest that they were referring specifically to me. They
are referring to dummies to general. And if I buy one of their books,
I am identifying myself as one of those dummies. I won't do that.

 

[Ken Blake]

Personally I don't really mind, because I realise that "Dummy" (not
Dummie!) is used in two ways:

1. idiot, the original (for our purposes) meaning
2. beginner

, and it's the second one I aimed at. I _did_ think it was an unwise
choice when I first saw the series, especially since I think in British
English the second use is somewhat less widely used.

As far as I'm concerned, "dummy" does not have that second meaning. If
a book had a title like "Windows 7 for Beginners" I would have no
problem with it.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Ken.

I have a few random but related thoughts on this "dummies" topic.

My favorite Okie, Will Rogers, once said, "We are all ignorant, just about
different things."

"Ignorant", of course, does not mean "stupid". It only means that we
haven't learned THAT thing...Yet.

When I got my first TRS-80 in 1977, I was certainly ignorant of almost
everything about computers. Took me a while to stop wondering why I kept
seeing numbers like 255 and 32,768 pop up so often in computer-speak, and
why does "K" mean 1024 and not 1,000? I knew I had to start at the
beginning, so I got Adam Osborne's "Microcomputers - Volume 0". Yes, volume
ZERO. And I could not understand it! :>(

Nobody I knew had a computer then, and there were no Dummies books. But
there were plenty of magazines with BASIC programs that I could type in and
run. After I finally learned about hexadecimal and assembly language,
things started to fall slowly into place, bit by bit (pardon the pun). Then
floppy disks arrived and there were books that explained tracks, sectors and
FAT. MANY hours were invested in learning those details - and I still get
dividends every day from that investment. I'm sure it will continue to pay
dividends as long as I use computers, which I expect will be the rest of my
life. (I'm only 76, so there may be another quarter-century to go.)

Microsoft Press used to sell the "Resource Kit" books for each Windows
generation. These were thick, expensive volumes with "more than we wanted
to know" about the internal workings of Windows. About half the books were
way over my head and told how to network a company's thousands of computers
worldwide, which I certainly didn't need. But the other half of each book
justified the full price of the book for me. There were even screenshots of
the MBR and boot sector! WOW! Those solved a lot of mysteries for me. I'm
not sure that there are RKs for Vista or Win7, or will be one for Win8; the
one for WinXP is the last I have. Nowadays, I find most of this kind of
information in the Windows Inside Out series. Neither the RKs nor the IO
series are aimed at "dummies", but even a person as ignorant as I was can
learn a lot from these books.

But I mostly agree with you: I am ignorant of many things, but I don't
consider myself a Dummie. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Ken Blake" wrote in message

I might be a senior these days, under some definitions, but I'm no
Dummie!

I know I'm in the minority, but I find the titles of all those "...for
Dummies" books insulting, and I refuse to buy them.

I've bought lots of books over the years for computers, covering most
subject/topics, but have found most of them lacking in information.
They look good on the shelf, but when I start looking for something I
want/need to know, the information isn't there. :-(

As long as you say "most of them," rather than "all," I agree. Many of
them are pretty good, but it's rare one that's really outstanding.

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:05:36 -0700, Ken Springer


I know I'm in the minority, but I find the titles of all those "...for
Dummies" books insulting, and I refuse to buy them.

[...]

I give +4 in favor of the For Dummies series.

That's +1 each for Ken Springer, James Silverton, Nil, and Crash.

Basically, those four people have said all I could say.

And no, I don't see the books as perfect, just frequently useful for me.

BTW - I guess, given his nym, Dave "Crash" Dummy just *has* to like the
For Dummies books

I learned long ago that one essential learning tool is humility.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

In message <[email protected]>, VanguardLH <[email protected]>
writes:
[]

How is what I said considered bitter? Humans are born and they die.
There are new crops of humans being born every day. They get educated
by those that are older. At the start, everyone is a newbie regarding
any topic. The uneducated will continually exist. That's an
expectation, not the problem. Uneducated that have initiative will
research first and then ask when they've exhausted what avenues of
knowledge they know about. The problem is with the uneducated that LACK
initiative to even try to resolve their own problem.

Yes, but please distinguish them from those who could solve their
problem if they had some basic knowledge that you (or others) hardly
think about, because it is "obvious". It might not be obvious at all
to them.

When starting in an area, I sometimes have had to ask probe
questions first to find out what I had to find out. It is easy to
overlook something if you are not even aware that there is something
there.

When I started getting into JavaScript and HTML for real, I had
to proceed in this manner. There are still gaps that I have to fill
in, but they are not so big now. I persevered, and yesterday, I found
out that the first cut of a form handler that I sent to my co-worker
at the main office just worked. I asked him to try to break it. He
tried, and he failed, because I had learned well and was able to apply
it. That came from lots of questions (and lots of working with the
answers and part-answers).

Of course, you have missed that they are showing initiative by asking
here ... (-:

(Actually, there's probably more to that than is relevant for this
particular discussion, _if_ they've never used newsgroups before. I have
two intelligent friends who only lurk.)

Some might argue that their only lurking is proof of their
intelligence. USENET can be a morass at times.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

As far as I'm concerned, "dummy" does not have that second meaning. If
a book had a title like "Windows 7 for Beginners" I would have no
problem with it.

Quite.

People who are rude are not strong because they exhibit force.
They are weak because they can not control themselves.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gordon]

Quite.

People who are rude are not strong because they exhibit force.
They are weak because they can not control themselves.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Gosh. If you think there is something "rude" about the "Dummies" series
of books than you REALLY need to get out a bit more....

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

On 3/05/2012, VanguardLH posted:
And if Windows 7 has detailed descriptions of the syntax and function
of the command-line commands, I've been unable to find it.
Are you asking about the DOS-mode commands, like chkdsk and dir? What
happens when you type "help" in a command console?


Try getting information on "net start", for instance.
net start /?

I was going to post the same advice, but I tried it first and cancelled
my post. I'm on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit.

Here's why:

<Command window>
[C:] net start /?
The syntax of this command is:

NET START
[service]

</Command window>

And net /? is not much better.

Try "net start /help". Much better information than just /?, which
only gives syntax. Why MS didn't provide the full help with /? is
anyone's guess...

Geez. I never suspected that /? and /help were not synonymous :-(

Like you, I can't imagine why they aren't the same.

Thanks for the completely unexpected info!

You're welcome.

Another set of helpful resources are the Windows Command Reference help
file (available at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?
id=2632) and the on-line reference http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc754340(v=ws.10).aspx.

Thanks for those, but since they wrapped badly here, for everyone's
convenience, I'll provide TinyURLs for both.

http://tinyurl.com/6qzplpp for #1
http://tinyurl.com/7o9j5ku for #2