Computer troubles/questions? Ask here!

[cheezus]

I'm having a bit of a slow day (patiently waiting for the courier to finally bring a package), so it's time for another tech thread. Post your questions, and I will answer.

[k in IA]

1. I'm sorry I'm an idiot but how do you post a link to an article?

[cheezus]

2. sure thing, just paste the url into your post

the board turns it into a link automatically

[k in IA]

3. Where is the url?

[cheezus]

6. the url IS the link (well, the location, anyway)

the url for DU is http://democraticunderground.com

the board made it into a clickable link for me

[k in IA]

10. Thank you, you're a doll.

:loveya:


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040810/ap_on_el_pr/kerry_ad&cid=694&ncid=1963&sid=96378798


I doing a test so just ignore me.

Woo Hoo - it worked!

:party:

[fknobbit]

4. Go up to mail and

"send a link" if you are ronning outlook express.

[k in IA]

12. Thanks

:hi:

[serryjw]

5. Help.........VERY appreciated

WIN'98 in the last several months my 'puter freezes all the time. There does not seem to be any reason. Then after wiggling mouse for 20 seconds in unfreezes.
I have a fire wall and Mcafee virus protection on the computer. I have used spybot and spysweeper and registry mechanic in the last week...nothing helps.

[cheezus]

9. i really hate to say this, but

win98 wants to be reinstalled. It just starts doing that after it's been runing for a year or more of normal use.

either that or it's a hardware problem (but i'd put my money on windows being the culprit)

[serryjw]

40. How about 4 years of

abnormal use??

Next question. I use Outlook Express and for 2 years people complain my links I send are NEVER hot?? Why?

[notadmblnd]

7. ok, here's one for you..

None of my devices are operational because the cat, who likes to nap on my monitor, hurled down on to my USB hubs power supply and fried my USB port. I was thinking I could make the repair myself if it was just a port card, I could pop it out and replace it. Well when I took the cover off the machine to locate the card I saw that it is not a card at all but is mounted on the motherboard. My question is... how difficult is it for me to replace? what all is involved? soldering? or will it simply snap off and back on? If I take this to the shop for repair will it be expensive? Should I just investv in a new machine?

[cheezus]

13. good news! you just need a seperate usb card

they go in a pci slot and are cheap. you may be able to disable the onboard usb in your bios.

make sure you have an open pci slot, go buy the card, put it in. pm me if you have any problems doing it (you shouldn't)

[notadmblnd]

that is good news

I'll go to comp USA and price one this afternoon. Thanks.

[freetobegay]

8. I have an IBM think vision

I had installed a video card when I first got it. Last week I accidently uninstalled it & now can't get it to work! The original video card is on the mother board & I can't remember hos I disabled it to get the newer one to work.

[cheezus]

15. a few thoughts (need more info)

what operating system?

if windows, right click on my computer, select properties...

then find the device manager. are there any ?marks or !points on device icons?

as far as the on board video, try going into the bios and see if it's enabled/disabled there.

[freetobegay]

18. Ooops sorry.

Windows XP, I installed the video card, then the drivers. When I look at the device manager thingy, all I see is the original intel(R) extreme graphics card, my nvidia card doesn't seem to show up.

[cheezus]

21. it's not good if xp doesn't see it

but it could just be that your bios isn't letting xp see it. reboot and hit F1 or Del or whatever it is on that machine. muck around the bios to see if you can find something like
video: internal/AGP

you probably want AGP

if that does't work, turn it off, take the card out, put it back in. xp seeing it yet?

no, next step: try it in a different computer (friend maybe?). if it still doens't show up, the card is probably bad.

but I'm banking on the bios thing.

[freetobegay]

22. Thanks for your help!

Will try that this evening.

[Kadie]

11. I have wireless internet and I keep losing my connection

Am I just going to have to live with it this way or is there hope on the horizon?

We have tried a couple of different brands (not sure of the names right now), is there a brand you would recommend?

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it.

[cheezus]

17. wireless as in wifi aka airport aka 802.11?

and is it just your computer (laptop, i assume) that loses connection, or do all devices?

[Kadie]

20. We have cable interenet in our home

"as in wifi aka airport aka 802.11" I have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. LOL

and are running two pc's off of a router(?). We thought we would try it rather that run cable wire all over the house. LOL

I am not too compter savy, but it seems like when I am loading pages everything gets kind of bogged down and it just loses connection. Sometimes it runs just fine, others it really starts to drive me crazy.

I think we are using D-Link right now.

[cheezus]

23. okay, I'll include a quick lesson free of charge :)

your internet comes into your house over coaxial cable. The cable "modem" takes that and turns it into ethernet. the "router" moves the traffic around on an ethernet network.

the technology that does the WIRELESS network is called IEEE 802.11. It's often called WiFi, and apple calls it Airport(tm).

question about it losing connection: does stuff just quit loading, or do you actually lose the whole wireless connection (windows will let you know when it finds and loses networks).

I've generally heard good stuff about D-link, but I know it's a cheaper brand. However, my guess at this point is that it's more of a software issue than a hardware one.

[Kadie]

26. Thanks

Pages do stop loading, and/or I get the little bubble saying I have lost connection. It usually comes back in a few moments, but it is a pain. Sometimes it seems like things just get so bogged down that I need to close IE and sometimes even need to reboot to get everything going again.

[cheezus]

34. how is your signal strength? are there other wifi networks around?

does it do this when you are physically close to the router? also, does windows see more than one network? it could be a neighbor interfere. a client had that problem in his apt once, we had to switch channels and it fixed it right up.

[High Sierra Buck]

30. Why would you consider this a software issue?

Couldn't it be an issue with signal strength being on the hairy edge, and multiple possible OTHER WiFi networks within a close proximity that could be causing a slight bit of confusion as to which router should be chosen on what preferred network?

If this is a software problem, what particular package on the system would be causing such an issue?

[cheezus]

31. it's almost always a software issue

unlike software, hardware tends to work right. And when I say software issue, I include configuration/settings problem in there.

[Kadie]

33. Thank you very much for your help

I will show this thread to hubby when he gets home.

[High Sierra Buck]

37. I may be wrong in my assumptions here

And correct me if I am wrong, but software does not generally fail intermittently, where hardware is more likely to fail on an intermittent basis. If the software was inproperly configured, it would consistently fail the same way, always. Where as, hardware, for example poor signal strength, would be an intermiitent issue, failing under stress from environmental conditions.

[High Sierra Buck]

29. If I understand the issue.........

It sounds as if you have a wireless router at some location in your home, with a broadband internet connection to the wireless router and some number (2) of remote wireless PCs in the WiFI network.

I'm assuming you are using 802.11B as your motus apperendi....lol....

Do you find that if ytou are loading a lot of pages frequently it drops the signal, or is more apt to drop the signal, or, does it simply just drop them at random and lose them until you restart?

[Kadie]

35. It just drops at random

not only when loading a page. It usually gets connection again in just a few moments, but sometimes I can't get pages to load unless I close IE or reboot.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. Do you know of a good FREE tape backup software for Unix

With an interactive interface, preferrably GUI? Even if it's some GUI wrapper over dump/restore? Has anyone ever written such a thing?

Edit: added the all-importatnt qualifier to title.

[cheezus]

19. free as in beer?

I dunno... tar? ;)

don't know of one off the top of my head. check sourceforge.org and freshmeat.net

[midnight armadillo]

36. Try amanda

That's a command line only one, it's a classic Unix tool, and it uses tar & gzip behind the scenes if memory serves. There's no GUI that I know of.

[emulatorloo]

16. I want to upgrade my Windows computer - do I have to reinstall my OS?

I have a 1.4 celeron now. I want to install an ABIT nf7 mb with and Athlon 2600 or better.

Do I have to reformat and reinstall XP?

[cheezus]

25. maybe not, but probably

I think XP uses a different kernel for intel and AMD processors. Here's what I'd do:

1: make backups of all your data you don't want lost
2: replace the parts you're replacing
3: see if it works (it might)

4: boot from the XP cd to install

you shouldn't have to reformat, and all you data SHOULD stay, but hey, that's why we made backups.

you'll probably have to do the whole product activation crap again too.

[lpbk2713]

24. What do you suggest for P2P file sharing?

Kazaa Lite is what I'm using right now. What about BitTorrent? Any better?

[cheezus]

27. apples and oranges

kazaa is pretty good (lite doesn't have the spyware). Bittorrent works quite a bit differently (you click a link on a webpage or from an email and the client then loads and tries to get it). Try both.

two hints:
1. suprnova.org

2. if you have a natrouter/firewall you need to point some ports to your machine or your xfer speed will suck

[psychopomp]

39. eMule

Works for me. Like the name, slow, but darn reliable. No spyware and designed by geeks for geeks.

[Wcross]

28. OK- Is my monitor going bad or is it my video card?

My display started to show inch wide verticle lines on it with horizontal lines across the verticle ones. I enjoy computer games, I was playing Far Cry and now I can't even start a game because of graphics problems- (the screen is filled with giberish)

I reformated the hard drive and am running using the same video card- but the drivers have not been installed. Now it seems better but every once in a while half the screen will get fuzzy and have horizontal lines across it.

Whats wrong with it?

[cheezus]

32. I can help you find out

do the old switcheroo: does another monitor on the same vid card do the same thing? does your monitor do the same thing on a different computer?

other than that, download the latest drivers for your card, as well as the latest directx.

[RedCloud]

38. My mouse just ate my cheese sandwich!

one click and away it ran.

[cally]

41. Two questions

Can't help it, I like this:

First, I have a home phoneline network. It works fine and I have no regrets. I have 4 computers on the network and one cable internet connection. I just bought a new computer (had it built) and the person had never heard of one and can't buy the necessary parts. I know I can find them on the internet but I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to change. Has noone heard of these networks?

Second question: My daughters have installed about 5 different music download sites and music from each one. They have downloaded myriad other programs. I mostly refuse to help with computer problems on their machine because it is such a disaster. Any suggestions on how to save the music and get rid of all the programs? I think they need to save all to a CD and re-install the initial operating system.

[BlueJazz]

42. Cheezus...Is there a "switch" ( setup/ ? )

for XP pro that I can use to avoid a new installation from Locking up?

I'll explain further: I'm trying to upgrade a lady's intel board
856PERL....
It works fine with 98SE but hangs after about 1/4 way through when trying to install XP

As I said I THINK it has something to do with hardware issues.

Thanks

The board is almost new with 512 meg ram..usb..ect