Date: 09/19/05     Keywords: web

About three months ago, my hard drive starting ticking and clicking. Then when I started my pc, nothing happened. The hard drive died. I decided to take it out to check out what the make it was. But when I put it back in, it started working. I must have resuscitated it. It's scary now cause I just bought another Seagate. A 160 GB this time. With the plethora of information and files I have (images, music files from my numerous cds - past and present, actually documents and reports that I've created, and of course my website - http://www.ladiorange.com), I'm scared of something like this happening again.

I was reading a post online, "Death of a Hard Drive", about this guy who put his speakers too close to his hard drive.... I started thinking back to 3 months ago... Did I do something like that? I can't remember, tbh. But what are some things I should avoid doing so that my hard drives to get messed up?

What about Seagates? Do you think they are better than Maxtors? I've read online horror stories about Maxtors. My own 20 Gig at home is a Seagate and, other than that one off incident, I think it's pretty reliable and quiet...

What do you guys think?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/490552.html

Date: 09/19/05     Keywords: no keywords

How do I find out if my laptop is "bluetooth compatible" or not? I have a linksys wireless card, does that make it so?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/490271.html

Date: 09/18/05     Keywords: spyware

Hi there.

On my brother's computer I was running a spyware scan. While I did so, I changed the resolution to 640x480 and the colour to 16 colours. Now it won't change back, won't detect the mouse, and won't troubleshoot. What the hell did I do and how do I fix it?

xposted to computerhelp

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/489832.html

Date: 09/18/05     Keywords: no keywords

A few weeks ago I posted in here asking for a solution to my CD/DVD driver problem. They were completely wiped out, I even went as far as taking apart my tower to see if a solution posted in here would help. I finally decided to order A recovery disk for the drivers and yesterday when they arrived I decided to install the recovery disks.


This was a bad idea because not only did ut return my pc back to its factory settings, it also made all my files and previous third part programs go bye bye too. So after I got over the fact that my files were never to be recovered (believe me I learned my lesson) I went about and reinstalled all my third party programs that I had on their respective disks.


A bit tedius but nothing too bad then I began to notice things like alerts tell me that I was low on virtual memory when I had 1,000th less files in my pc. This was when I was only with just my programs and a clean slate of folder files.


So whats going on? I dont understand why I would be running on low virtual memory when I have much much much less room being occupied with what I have in my pc now. Can someone give me possible answers to this problem? And if its fixable please dont hesitate in telling me how to go about doing so.


Also, this might be a stupid question, is there even a slight possibility that the files I had in my pc before the Recovery thing I did, could still be on my pc somewhere where I wouldnt know? I mean, can that be a possible reason as to why my memory is so low? Because its storing the stuff that I had previously somewhere?


Its a slim chance but I figured Id ask, my weekend cant get any worse than it already is.


Thanks in advance for any or all answers/solutions to my problem, youre help is very much appreciated.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/489715.html

Date: 09/18/05     Keywords: no keywords

I have a Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop, Windows XP (Professional, if that makes a difference), Pentium 4, that I just got last March. It was working just fine up until about a week ago when something went wrong. When I booted it up, a screen came up prompting me to choose either Windows XP Professional or Windows XP professional setup. I chose the former, which brought me to a new screen. This said that something had gone wrong and gave me a list of options with which to start my computer. They were:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Safe Mode with Networking Capabilities (something along those lines)
Last Good Configuration
Start Windows Normally

When I chose Start Windows Normally, a blue screen came up. It said that my BIOS was not fully ACPI compliant. It also instructed me to go to www.hardware-update.com (I did, and it's just an advertising site) or contact my system vendor. It also said that if I can't do any of these things, I should press F7 when prompted to install storage drivers; that would disable ACPI.

After the paragraph of text, it showed this:

***STOP: 0x000000A5 (0x00000011, 0x00000007, 0xF9FE9C00, 0x0100000E)

This exact same blue screen came up when I chose Last Good Configuration.

I went through this cycle of turning off my computer manually and rebooting, only to come up to the same previous screen. When I chose Safe Mode, a regular black screen came up saying Windows failed to boot up and it displayed this as the problem:

\system32\hal.dll

So, first of all: what exactly is a BIOS? What is ACPI compliant? And how can I make a BIOS ACPI compliant so my computer will work again? If anyone can dechiper what's going on, please help me...I can't start Windows at all. My computer boots up, and just kind of stops working at that blue screen.

I also apologize in advance for my ineptitude with computers...I appreciate any advice you could give me.

x-posted to computerhelp

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/489412.html

Date: 09/17/05     Keywords: no keywords

Okay, this is my last question, I swear! Again, this is for my oldass IBM laptop.. Everytime I start my computer, i get errors that these four things are missing: Vredir.vxd, msnp32.dll, and dfs.vxd .. I kind of gathered that these three are related to a networking thing?? and then also: vnetsup.exe which I gathered is a trojan of some kind??

So how can I fix it so that these things 1) aren't missing or 2) erase it completely so that they don't keep telling me they are missing? I do use networking between this laptop and my main computer, so I don't want to mess with the networking thing without any other advice first!!

and how do i really erase vnetsup.exe? It's out of my registry and I can't find it on my computer.. ):

Thanks for any help!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/488981.html

Date: 09/16/05     Keywords: no keywords

We have an old IBM laptop with windows 98 installed, which is basically the only thing that can be installed on here because of the low memory.. but when you go to the properties, you can't get any higher than 16 bit color so everything looks like its on safe mode.

How do you get it to go higher?? Do I need to install something? If so, what? And where can I get it?

It's highly annoying. ):

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/488044.html

Date: 09/16/05     Keywords: no keywords

I have an MSI K7D Master (MS6501) motherboard with two 64-bit/66MHz PCI slots. I'm looking to use these slots for something (providing I can find something useful to use in them...). All I can find online are RAID cards (SCSI and SATA, mostly), Fibre adapter cards, and gigabit ethernet cards. I think I may have seen a thread on a message board somewhere about a video card of that standard, but I really don't need that. I'll be looking into a RAID card, but then I still have that one more slot empty... Anyone know of any other products available in this standard and where I might find them for purchase (online or otherwise)? I'm in Ottawa Ontario Canada if you're going to suggest local shops. Thanks for any input you could provide.
Crossposted to computer_help and computerhelp.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/487715.html

Date: 09/13/05     Keywords: no keywords

I have two computers set up in my home network through a linksys router.
One computer is a Power Mac G5 running the latest version of OS X.
The other computer is a home build X86 computer running the latest version of Windows 2000 Pro.

My goal is to set it up so that I can swap files back and forth between computers. I have set it up so that I can acess my Mac HD from my windows computer (by configuring the mac's network setting,) but I am unable to figure out how to set it up so I can acess my windows computer's HD from my mac.

Any help will be much appriciated.

End.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/485921.html

Date: 09/11/05     Keywords: no keywords

Hello,

Would anyone be willing to help me set-up a wireless network? I have a D-link 624 wireless router and a D-link USB wireless adaptor. I know how to hook everything up, but I just can't get the connection to work. I have ADSL internet which works fine when connected directly.

Thanks.

EDIT: I managed to get it working with the default connection, but I want to set up my own secure network.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/485840.html

Date: 09/11/05     Keywords: spyware

I recently updated windows me after installing all the updates including Internet Explorer 6 I began to experience problems with my computer. Often it would just freeze or hang when I tried to open internet explorer. Additionally my screen keeps on freezing even when I'm not using the internet.

I eventually did a system restore to a point before my updates and downloaded firefox. This has been working a lot better but there are still times when my computer freezes and when I press ctrlaltdel it says Explorer is not responding. Is there anything I can do to figure out what the problem is and fix it? Any help would be really appreciated.

P.S I dont think its a spyware problem

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/485409.html

Date: 09/08/05     Keywords: no keywords

how do you make it so fonts appear smoother looking?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/484896.html

Date: 09/07/05     Keywords: virus, web, yahoo

The history:
Several months back I was looking for a certain model for a certain hair-do for a friend. I clicked around many different Web sites and links and whatnot. All of a sudden, while on a page, I started getting bombarded with pop-ups. Normally pop up blockers work for me. Then, even if not online (well, technically, having DSL means always being connected, but...) like if I'm in, say, Word, I get pop-ups! I told a co-worker, who has a lot more experience than I, and she said to run Norton, Anti-Spy, delete cookies, empty trash and restart. She said deleting my cookies every night would fix it. Wrongola. It helps a little, but not totally. When I ran Norton, there was a file it said was bad, and then it couldn't delete it. I recently noticed the toolbar on Internet Explorer is not something I put there. I had downloaded the Yahoo toolbar for the Anti-Spy thing, and it's totally gone! I downloaded it again. Gone again after restarting. So last night when Norton ran, it found the file again, and I caught trojan.elitebar or something along those lines...and isn't there a trojan virus??

So, am I totally screwed? Or is there a way to fix me?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/484518.html

Date: 09/07/05     Keywords: no keywords

I'm running a Gateway PC with Windows XP. Today, when I turned it on, XP told me that it had detected new hardware (I didn't do anything that I know of!) and was looking for "NIC Management Service Configuration Driver". The wizard was unable to find the Driver, so "the Hardware was not installed". Can anyone tell me why this would occur? What is this driver for? Is it something I need? If it is, what do I do now (since the wizard couldn't find it)?

Thanks for any help you can give me. Let me know if more info is needed to solve this.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/484226.html

Date: 09/06/05     Keywords: no keywords

Reently I fried one of my hard drives and had to replace it. I tried to re-install my audio drivers but the CD is completely scratched and utterly destroyed by my dogs. Also, everytime I plug in a memory into my USB port it cannot automatically install the USB Mass Storage Device Drivers, so I need help as to finding drivers for that as well. Does anyone know where I can obtain the drivers for my audio or using the memory stick?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/483860.html

Date: 09/05/05     Keywords: linux

i have a old computer that i am wanting to set up as a server. i want to run linux on it, and i have the stuff i need to put linux on it, but im not exactly sure everything i need to do to set it up as a server.

can anyone help me with this? even some links would be nice.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/483597.html

Date: 09/05/05     Keywords: no keywords

Hey guys, a video card question here.

I was playing the game Starcraft when I started having color issues. The screen would either partially or completely turn to really bright colors, like oil in water. Yellows and purples and greens and such. I researched the problem and found that I should probably get a video card instead of using onboard graphics. So I got a BFG Tech GeForce 6200 OC (OverClocked) 256MB DDR AGP Graphics card. The guy I got it from at Best Buy specifically said this card would be fine to play games like Starcraft, and even higher up games like Halo 2 (after turning off some accelerations).

It's all installed and I THINK it's working okay. But I can only get Starcraft to work when I turn the screen colors down to 8-bit (lowest). If I have Medium or Highest selected, I get the same color distortions.

Basic question: Is that normal? Is that right? Seems like it should work on any setting.
Sean

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/483382.html

Date: 09/05/05     Keywords: no keywords

Ok...I don't understand what's going on with my laptop. I have a Compaq and whenever I turn it on, it asks me for my password. Then when I get past that stage, the desktop loads with all the icons, etc. Then, all of a sudden everything freezes except for the mouse. I can't click anything, the start menu won't come up, etc. I don't know what happened and I really need help as soon as possible!

Please and thank you.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/483152.html

Date: 09/05/05     Keywords: linux

I've stumbled upon this & can't work anything out.

I've just gotten a new video card, an ATI Radeon 9600. I installed it on my motherboard (with some hassle since the previous one got stuck) and switched on the computer. Since my previous card was a Radeon 9200, there was no need to reinstall the drivers. However. Small grayscale text (or anything of that sort) is dark green instead of its proper grays.

I have tried the following, but the problem still persists...
* two different Win98 systems
* a Gnoppix live CD
* installing the latest Windows drivers
* driver gamma
* Adobe Gamma
* some Linux gamma thing whose name I can't recall (it's past 2 AM here)

My monitor is a Belinea 19", if that's relevant.

Thanks for your time!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/483013.html

Date: 09/05/05     Keywords: no keywords

So today my father handed me some dvds to burn for him and since I didnt have a program for it (I got rid of the program I had because it was taking up too much space and I wasnt using it) so I went ahead and tried to download one off a filesharing service. I got one, downloaded it, found out that it wasnt what I was looking for and uninstalled it. So after the restart I come to find out that neither or my cd or dvd drives are working now when they were working just fine before I installed that dvd burner program. I look through my pc to see whats going on and I find this:


http://pictures.greatestjournal.com/userimg/4828621/186115


What I want to know is whether or not I can fix this on my own or not. Also, what can I do, if I can fix it on my own, to make them work again?


Ive got a really bad feelin that Im screwed and itll make my wallet scream to fix this, lol.


Thanks for any help in advance, its much appreciated.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/482568.html