Date: 09/20/06     Keywords: software

I've been trying to play FreeSpace 2 with my gamepad (a Logitech Dual Action) and I can't seem to get the dratted thing to work, no matter what I do.

The profiler software has a FreeSpace2 profile - that doesn't work. Nor does binding the gamepad keys to the in game keyboard commands with the profiler software work (ie, button1=h). Nor does running the gamepad without the profiler software seem to help.

The gamepad works (it's bindable natively under Hitman: Blood Money anyway) and this is just driving me up a wall. Has anyone had a similar problem in the past? How did you solve it?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/980713.html

Date: 09/20/06     Keywords: no keywords

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/980457.html

Date: 09/18/06     Keywords: no keywords

Does anyone know how to change the document icon on Open Office?  It's giving me vertigo.  I tried Googling and their help pages, but no luck.Thanks!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/979503.html

Date: 09/18/06     Keywords: html

I am still having severe Internet Connection problems.

I wrote a post last week ( http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/977759.html ). Unforunatley, I don't have the money needed to replace any hardware on my computer at this moment... And I'm still not sure that is the problem.

I use a USB wire to connect my modem to the computer. The ethernet plugs always gave me problems. I am running Windows XP Service Pack 2, on a Dell Dimension only 2 years old, 1GB DDR RAM, 2.53Ghz Pentium 4 Processor, 260GB of hard drive space. So you can see, my computer is still pretty decent.. and it's not a lack of memory or anything.

So today I was disconnected 5 times. I was not downloading anything. I wasn't even DOING anything for a few of those times. I just got disconnected now for over an hour. I tried everything.

Turning the computer off.. unplugging the modem.. Renewing my IP.. Repairing the connection.. I even tried to see if my connection would work on another computer, so I hooked up a spare one to it and nope. After shutting down my computer a 4th time, it finally decided to work when I turned it back on.

Now I am starting to think it is my modem. Which really pisses me off considering I bought it no more than 6 months ago for $99.99. <-- That's a lot of money for me.

I'm using a Motorola SURFBoard SB5120 modem. I have the main cable wire going into a splitter the cable company (Optimum Online is the service I use right now) gave to me. One wire goes to the TV, and one to the modem.

When going to my Network Connections, I am confused. There are three listed there:

Local Area Connection 3
Limited or no connectivity, Firewalled
Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection..

1394 Connection
Connected, Firewalled
1394 Net Adapter

Local Area Connection 5
Connected, Firewalled
Motorola SURFboard SB5120 USB Cable..

I don't know what to do anymore... When I told this to the cable company, they told me to use an ethernet cable which has absolutely no effect.

Also. When I DID plug the ethernet wire into my computer, an orange light would go on, then go off. This happened repeatedly while I watched the lights on my modem all go off and then slowly blink back on again one by one.

I'm afraid I'm going to get disconnected forever again :( What would you do?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/978964.html

Date: 09/16/06     Keywords: no keywords

So I have a laptop I'm looking to sell. Obviously I want it to be all spic and span for the new owners, so I set about doing a fresh Windows install, updating all the drivers, etc...

Like a lot of people I had a few stickers on the top, just a few, and all but one came off without a problem. One, however, left a patch of sticky residue behind and I'm not sure what to use to clean it. I obviously don't want something too abrasive that might scratch the case, and I'm also worried about using strong cleaners (my dad suggested Goo-Gone which worried me - I don't want to discolor the case).

Any suggestions?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/978717.html

Date: 09/15/06     Keywords: no keywords

I have an iPod mini, and I've had it for a couple of months. I haven't used it much. I put some podcasts on it and they played okay. I went to play them again and they wouldn't. They appear in the window as being there, but they won't play. I figured I would redo it, got rid of them, put new ones on. No luck. They still won't play, even though they are registered as being on there. It is charged and everything. I'm about to throw the thing at the wall.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/978641.html

Date: 09/15/06     Keywords: no keywords

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/09/14/china_sub_100_quid_pc/

Godson has to be the worst name for a computer that I've ever heard of, including those cheesy-sounding early 80s ones that all uniformily have first names as names to get you to think of them as possessing actual intelligence or being (user)friendly, whichever comes first.

They should have just named it "Tientzu". That way, they can even have this slogan:

TIENTZU- JUST LIKE LAOTZU, EXCEPT EASIER TO UNDERSTAND!

[edit: Okay, it's a name for a CPU and not a PC. Ignore everything that I've just said]

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/978244.html

Date: 09/13/06     Keywords: web

This problem irks me.

I spent $100 on a new cable modem, the same one I had originally (Before something was spilled into it and it was destroyed...) and I keep having straaange problems. The cable company says it not their fault, and I agree now.

So I have random times where my connection is just LOST. The only way to get it working again, is to unplug the modem.. wait a little bit.. plug it back in again, and all is good. Sometimes it happened 5 times a day... sometimes none.. and sometimes more than 10.

Now after all these months I FINALLY figured out what I was doing at the time of the disconnections. It ALWAYS happens when I am downloading something! Whether it be a torrent, limewire, a website... and update for a program, anything, I get disconnected.

I have no idea what's going on, I think the internet hates me.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/977759.html

Date: 09/13/06     Keywords: no keywords

So here's the situation: I just found a usb cable that goes from USB to the old proprietary mac round plug, ya know? And I have an old, but functional, Apple Laserwriter select 300 that uses this port. I even have a sealed toner cartridge. My question is: Is there ANY way to make this work in windows xp?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/977613.html

Date: 09/12/06     Keywords: asp

Speed freaks will need bricks
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33343

What's with the 200 watt graphics card?? It made me think of two things:

1. Back To The Future
2. 3Dfx Voodoo5 6000

Anybody remember the Voodoo5 6000? Yes, that crazy card needed an external power brick too. Or maybe it was another Voodoo card that needed it, I forgot.

What are they going to do, slap 4 processors on a card or something? Plug it in, turn the computer on and start a fire. Or even better, slap 4 of those cards in quad SLI for 800 jigawatts of power!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/977346.html

Date: 09/11/06     Keywords: ebay

I will now proceed to rant about the eBay auction I supposedly have won.

I logged into my email and found that my Paypal payment has been rejected.

What in the world.

But anyways, I have just paid for a memory upgrade about oh, a few weeks ago. I'm pretty dern sure that I haven't bought anything that has pushed me over the Paypal limit (at least that's what my Paypal page said- I mean, who knows, green little ALIENS from ANDROMEDA could do all sorts of things without me knowing).

I have sent two messages to the eBay seller. The person is either busy being ticked off by my non-payment or... I don't know, something that is preventing me from getting my hard-won eBay bid (That was the GeForce 6800 card I was talking about). Needless to say that the planetary alignment is definitely off. [edit: I don't know whether the seller is indeed upset. That is just my guess, until I get a reply]

Anyways, as long as my eBay reputation doesn't go down I'm still ahead of the game. Everybody KNOWS that your eBay reputation is more important than your El Jay reputation, which is in turn more important than your real life reputation.

I think the Powers That Be simply took a look at my evil plans for the graphics card (i.e. upgrading a crappy computer and doing Stupid Computer Tricks[TM] with it) and just decided to strike me down. Feh.

But enough with the BS. Here's what I want to type:

STUPID PAYPAL! STUPID EBAY! GRRRARRRRASGHASDGashfdoasuihfo;n

I am not ready to point fingers at the seller yet. Seriously doubt it's something on that side.

Now I will go and find some places to crosspost this thing. Maybe there are eBay and Paypal communities with lotsa ticked off people ranting in them...

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/976953.html

Date: 09/10/06     Keywords: software

what are some other good software besides "Duplicate Finder" for finding duplicate files by exact match or file name... are any of them free?
thanks 

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/976676.html

Date: 09/09/06     Keywords: ebay

Thanks for the advice that some of you gave me on my graphics card upgrade. I'm actually doing this out of amusement (people do worse things out of boredom than this- like bungee jumping a VW from a bridge), a "haha look at what I'm doing to my old computer" sort of thing. I installed ATI HDTV Wonder to the 1.8GHz P4, with some "interesting" results. It did one of those putt-putt jobs where the HDTV picture slows down and speeds up. After I slapped in more RAM to 1GB, the putt-putting got much better. It might even go away completely after I put in the Geforce 6800 that I just got from Fleabay eBay. It was going on a GeForce4 Ti4200 so constipation was a problem.

(I'm not rich. I didn't spend that much on the used 6800.)

Assuming that the card would arrive by UPS unmolested and in such great working condition (one should never assume these things, but I'm just making conversation) that it actually allows for pipe unlock, the 3DMark 03/05 shootout to determine which machine is slower than the other is going to look like this:

Machine 1: "Supercharged Lawnmower with NOS"

HP Vectra VL420
P4 Willamette 1.8GHz
1GB RAM
eVGA Nvidia GeForce 6800 AGP 128mb, unlocked to 16 pipes / 6 vertex procs
vanilla PATA 7400RPM Hard Disk

Machine 2: "Ford Tempo"

Dell Inspiron 9100
P4 Prescott 3.0GHz HT
512MB RAM
God-knows-what-brand ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 PCIe (roughly equates to desktop 9600 at most)
wimpy notebook 5200RPM Hard Disk


It would be hilarious if the lawnmower loses... The drag race to the slowest and ends up being faster, that is. I don't think so, however.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/976493.html

Date: 09/07/06     Keywords: no keywords

Can anyone help PLEASE?

Problem - computer would not boot up.

Action taken to resolve - Windows XP installed in empty partition (that partition was formatted).

Result - Windows XP successfully installed.

Problem - old files etc gone


QUESTION - By putting Windows XP onto empty partition, after formatting that partition, is everything lost from other partitions? If not, how can files etc be found/retrieved?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/976172.html

Date: 09/06/06     Keywords: google

The other day, I went and stopped some of the processes that I didn't think were necessary (as per checking them on google first). Now, I can't seem to download any video files or the like. Is there a process that I deleted that I probably shouldn't have? If you name a process, I could likely tell you if I deleted it. If it matters, it doesn't work with any of the download things that comes with the browswers I use (IE, Firefox, Opera)

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/975984.html

Date: 09/06/06     Keywords: no keywords

My computer reminds me of this book, even though I've never read it:

Flight of the Old Dog
http://www.iblist.com/book2097.htm

Self-explanatory.

My old P4 has an old AGP 4x motherboard with an upgraded power supply that could take a newer graphics card. I wonder what is the best card I could get without going overboard. I was thinking about a Geforce 6600, but I thought maybe that'd be a waste with just a 4x AGP.

What I'm thinking is getting a graphics card that maxes out the bandwidth of the 4x AGP slot, but at the same time not going so much beyond it that it'd be a waste.

Perhaps I'm thinking about it in the wrong way. Maybe the GPU processing power helps even if the 4x bus is limiting the bandwidth.

I wish there's an application out there called "Old Dog Advisor". You know, one that tells you almost exactly how far up you can upgrade your Old Dog (like giving you a list of components) before you start wasting money on too high of an upgrade?

Any advice?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/975655.html

Date: 09/05/06     Keywords: no keywords

Does anyone have any experience with setting up SATA hard drive?
Yesterday. I was trying to a new hard drive in a new machine (Asus motherboard with a p4 intel 775 3.0ghz) I have two hard drives, one which is getting blue screen of death (in acceable boot device) which is a EIDE ata 100 Western digital 80gh hard drive set up as a slave. I was trying to set up the SATA Western digital as the master drive. After some configeration issues I finally got the computer to see the drive. However, the computer sees the drive as a raid, I ran the western digital lifeguard cd to set it up and didn't help. So it doesn't see a master drive. I tried taking out the other primary slave drive (the bad EIDE) and that didn't help.
Then I tried to change the setting in bios to native mode and that messed up the bios so I had to reset the cmos battery, which got it back to its orginal state. However when I try to run the win2k boot disk it came up with ntldr could not be found error when I try to install windows on the hard drive because it alteast see it.
I know these disk work because they have worked in other computers.

Does anyone know how I can get the motherboard to see this drive as the master and install windows on it? I have tried looking this up, with not much sucess.

Thanks crossposted

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/975226.html

Date: 09/04/06     Keywords: no keywords

I installed Opera several months ago and something happened that made it look like all the pages are totally messed up (sort of looks like safe mode) I quit using it then. I re-installed it last night and my bookmarks are all still there. However, it still looks like everything is opening in safe mode. Does anyone know what I did and how I fix it?

Thanks.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/974765.html

Date: 09/04/06     Keywords: no keywords

All of a sudden, if I clicked on the Firefox icon in the quick launch bar, absolutely NOTHING would happen. I tried it a dozen times and still nothing. I clicked on the IE icon and it work just fine. I decided to re-download and install firefox (hoping that my bookmarks woulndt be lost), and sure enough, eventhing is now peachy keen...

Why would it suddenly happen that I couln't click on the quick launch bar to open Firefox?

Any ideas appreciated.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/974183.html

Date: 09/04/06     Keywords: web

My cousin mistakenly got me a 1 gig Sandisk SD card, and not the Memory Stick Duo I need for my new camera (Sony T9). She sent it from Colorado, with no packaging or receipt, so returning or exchanging it is not an option. And I'm leaving for Europe shortly, so time is running out.

So, any ideas of where/how I can exchange this for the card I need?

EDIT: I guess I shouldn't have used the word "exchange"....any ideas of where/how I can swap this card for the card I need? Perhaps a barter-type website, community or some such non-retail store environment?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/973827.html