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So why exactly is my PortableApps globe wearing a witch's hat??

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Cloudy
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So why exactly is my PortableApps globe wearing a witch's hat??

At least, it looks like a witch's hat. I think it's only happened in the last hour. Is it a seasonal type thing, a visual alert of something, or perhaps it's telling me that one of my apps is evilly out of date? ;-D

Gord Caswell
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Hallowe'en

There must be something wrong with the date on your computer, see below.

It's a Hallowe'en themed icon. As coded, it displays only October 30 & 31.
There's also themed icons for Christmas, New Years Eve, and Valentine's Day.

Cloudy
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Well, I hate to burst my poor

Well, I hate to burst my poor little PortableApps platform's bubble but my computer knows exactly what the date is! Especially since it updates off the internet weekly. XP Pro SP3 on an old Dell Latitude. Platform 14.4.1.

I did consider Hallowe'en was the most likely reason and had a momentary, "Hasn't that just been and gone?" moment. So first thing I did was check the date, and after confirming that yes, my noggin is well attached, it's the day after Remembrance Day, I then considered if it might be an American holiday that was coming up (though I'd expect it to be regional - most things of this nature are) but couldn't think of anything.

I'm pretty sure it came up around 9am Australian Eastern Daylight Saving time. (Note, please, people, that's 'Daylight' with no 's' on the end! One of my little bug-bears, hearing how it's degenerated to 'Savings' over the years.) It might have been earlier but I'd been intermittently opening and closing a second instance of Notepad++ for the previous hour or so; I figure I'd have spotted it on at least one of those occasions.

Is it likely to indicate some odd little bug that you would like to chase up? If so, any other info you want from me? Otherwise, we'll just chalk it up to the ethernet/computer gremlins and go our merry ways.

John T. Haller
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Last Restart

When did you last restart the platform? I think it only checks the month and date at restart. The logic for displaying the witch's hat is (1) get the local system time, (2) is the month 10, if so continue, (3) is the day 30 or 31, show the little hat.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

Cloudy
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That's a possibility,

That's a possibility, especially since the hat persists two days later, but I'm sure I've done a restart of the computer in November - maybe I didn't. Can you think of any standard XP files that would have the restart date as one of their properties?

Also, can you please give me info on which button I'm meant to press to do a shutdown, restart or whatever, of the platform - the power button or the X button? I've tried hunting for that info before but the amazing number of hits that come up that are totally unrelated means if the answer is there somewhere, it's buried deep down. All I know is that I've I've managed to shutdown my computer when I wasn't intending to, using one or other of those buttons. I used to know which button...

John T. Haller
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X is close, Power is logout/shutdown/restart

X is close, Power is logout/shutdown/restart (this will show as eject when on a removable drive). Either one closes the platform. The power one just then asks Windows to show its standard 'would you like to shutdown' prompt.

As for when you last restarted, there's apparently a command that will show uptime.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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