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Computer help needed!

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MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

20:33 / 27.09.07

I guess this is a product of the Skype extension on Firefox reading any incidence of "888" as a toll-free exchange:

But it sure weirded me out.

02:29 / 28.09.07

TFT - silly question here, but any chance the wireless on your wireless router is not enabled? What does the WLAN light look like (green, amber, red, on, off, blinking)? If it's off, then the wireless function is off. Anything else means it's on, but the colour indicates the encryption type.
Here's your user manual in PDF. The explanation of what the lights mean is on page 12. How to access the router is on page 14 (I recommend the Web Browser method). And info on wireless settings starts on page 17.

07:08 / 28.09.07

Thank you so much, Cailín, but I'm afraid I remain flummoxed. All the lights seem to be on appropriately on the router and the adapter is activated on the laptop yet they simply can't see each other. There's just no signal. My dad would be muttering "...theory of the ends...theory of the ends..." but I don't even know what the ends are. I truly understand how some people felt with that newfangled videocassette recorder.

Mysterious Transfer Student

19:51 / 29.09.07

Suddenly, Firefox has decided it wants to read my keyboard inputs in a totally fubared manner. This is what the alphabet comes out as:

axje.uidchtnmbrl'poygk,qf;

No other application is doing this. What has I done wrong?

Mysterious Transfer Student

20:07 / 29.09.07

False alarm - Alt+Shift+plenty coffee were not my friends.

08:39 / 30.09.07

TFT - One thing I've had a problem with is a wireless card having its own program separate to Windows' own software, and this somehow messing things up. I have to exit the card's own program from the tray in the bottom-right, then right-click the Windows wireless icon (which says "Cimited or no connection), select "View available wireless networks", then "Change order of preferred networks", then tick the box saying something like "Use Windows to set up my wireless preferences". Could this be what's happening with yours?

11:53 / 30.09.07

Not a problem, but I'm looking for a clipboard replacement freeware download that can do cumulative copying and then paste all that I have gathered into one place with a single CTL-V. For example, I am looking at a list of films, I CTL-C all the ones that I fancy and then with one press of CTL-V I paste them all into a new document.

I know that there are lots of clipboard replacements out there but the descriptions never seem to mention if this is possible, and I can't test every one. Help me please experts.

20:11 / 30.09.07

Hi Twice,
Is your router set to broadcast it's SSID or network name? Often if this is switched off your network won't show up.

06:12 / 01.10.07

Thanks pingles and ZedK - a suitably informed colleague (his salary suggests) is coming round today. If I understand what he tells me, I will relate it.

16:36 / 05.10.07

Okay, I've something this time that I think should be a bit easier than a completely messed up laptop (which I managed to sort out in the end, hurrah).

I have a BT Voyager 2110 wireless modem thing, a desktop computer directly connected to this with a cable and a laptop connected by radioactive waves or something along those lines. The desktop computer is connected to a printer. I'd like to be able to access this printer with the laptop without having to drag the laptop over and plug it in every time, and ideally I'd also like to be able to access some files on the desktop and maybe even tell things using the laptop to download from the Intertubewebs directly onto the desktop.

It seems to me that this should be very easy, but I've had no luck so far.

02:22 / 07.10.07

ping:
The following is assuming you are a Windows user.
First, you need to share the printer and the folders you want to pass data between. Right-click on each one, click on Sharing, and just tell it to share. If your laptop runs a different version of Windows than your desktop, you may need to install additional printer drivers on your desktop.
Next, you need to set up a Workgroup. This is not hard. On your desktop, in Control Panel, go to System, click on the Network Identification tab, and then on Properties. Make sure your computer has a name. Under Member of, select Workgroup and name the workgroup (any name you like, but no spaces or funny characters). Click OK. It will tell you that you need to restart. Do that.
Repeat the above with the laptop - both the sharing and the Workgroup.
Once both computers are on, go to My Network Places on one of them. Click on Entire Network. Click on show "entire contents." Then Microsoft Windows Network. Your Workgroup should appear here. If you open it, you will see both your computers, and when you open one of them, it will probably ask you to log in (the login is the same login you use to get into the computer when you're sitting in front of it) Once you log in, you'll see its shared folders and printers. You can make shortcuts to these, so you don't have to go through all this nonsense to get to them again (right-click, create shortcut, move it to your desktop).
Your desktop will have to be on for you to print from the laptop, unless your printer is a network printer plugged into the router (not too likely in a home-based situation). You may experience a little lag, as transferring printer data across the airwaves takes longer than sending it through wires.
Hope that helps. If you get stuck, ask again.

17:20 / 07.10.07

Thanks for the help Cailin, but I'm still not having any luck. I have folders and printers set up as shared (although it seems to be a different version of Windows to the one you're citing; I'm using Windows XP, and instead of selecting folders to share it tells you to move them to the "Shared Documents" folder, and instead of having a Network Identification tab it has a Computer Name tab).

They both have different descriptions, different 'pute names and the same workgroup name. When I click on My Network Places on the laptop it comes up blank (and when I click on "View workgroup computers" from the links on the left it takes a minute and then says "Mshome is not accessible. You might not have permissions to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available"), and when I click it on the desktop it just comes up with the desktop.

Are there other settings I need to play with? The desktop's using ZoneAlarm firewall and is set to "medium" for trusted zone and "high" for the Internet, and I think the laptop's just using Windows firewall. I tried the "Set up a home or small office network" and "Set up a wireless network for a home or small office" links the other day; I think the former went wrong when it said that setting my laptop to network would mean anyone on the Internet could access it, and the latter when it asked me to insert a USB flash disk into the wireless router, which doesn't have a USB port.

18:38 / 08.10.07

Try turning off the firewalls on both machines. If it works, then the trouble is in one or both firewalls. If it doesn't, the trouble is something else.

20:05 / 08.10.07

Ah! That seems to work one way round at least - my laptop is picking up the desktop, which is the most important way round.

Erm, but is there a way to do it without making my always-connected-to-the-net 'putes prone to being attacked by millions of evil webcritters?

20:33 / 08.10.07

Wait, now I've turned firewalls back on on them both and both of them seem to be able to see each other (though it won't let me access the laptop from the desktop)? How odd...

01:55 / 09.10.07

In my experience, sometimes getting the firewall down long enough to allow the computers to access the permissions information is enough to get the ball rolling. Your laptop may have some proprietary firewall type component built into its wireless that isn't letting your desktop in. With that in mind, you might try Googling your laptop model with the words "network," "wireless" and "access," and see if there are forums that deal with its particulars.
Good luck.

06:07 / 09.10.07

Thank'ee. I'll see how it goes for a while and come back begging if necessary.

18:12 / 10.10.07

My computer seems to be running slow and when I look into CPU usage it looks like it's 100%! And this is just with Firefox open (on one page) and a Word doc being written. Anyone got any ideas what might be up or what I need to do next? Might possibly be a conflict between Norton and AVG but I can't figure out how to uninstall the latter.

18:27 / 10.10.07

Off the top of my head, a program called CCleaner may be a good start if you don't have it already - it's good for clearing out trash that may be impeding performance and also comes with a handy uninstall interface - although I wouldn't recommend uninstalling AVG, but that's just me.

Other than that... The dreaded Defragmenting?

18:37 / 10.10.07

What does task manager say is using the CPU, when you sort by CPU usage?

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

10:28 / 13.10.07

This is getting awfully specific, but I need some help in converting SVG files into a vector format that CorelDraw 9 will recognize. The GIMP is no help with SVG (well, it seems to something incredibly complicated involving "paths") and I need to create a scalable world map that will let me segment the globe into ten regions that I can print out "zoomed in" or "zoomed out" so that the Middle East region is as large as the North America region on different tiles.

It's for the game I'm working on. I'm not even sure the above makes sense.

In summary: I can get public domain world maps in SVG format, but my old graphics software (CorelDraw 9) can't recognize them or convert them into something I can use. Help?

17:18 / 15.10.07

I suppose plundering the public domain (jpg or png) maps at wikimedia commons wouldn't help, would it?

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:44 / 15.10.07

That's where I'm getting the SVG maps -- Wikipedia's pet rescalable format. Something that vectors is MUCH more useful than anything fixed-pixel-based.

18:02 / 15.10.07

It's a slightly rubbish solution, but perhaps newer software? If Coreldraw 12 would handle it, it's available off Amazon very cheap, or if you'd like to try newer ones for purely educational purposes, they can be downloaded off Bittorrent sites.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

18:45 / 15.10.07

I know -- I'm trying to stay good. I work with a bunch of graphic designers, but I also don't want to impose on colleagues with my own projects. But there is recourse if things get super dire.

09:45 / 02.11.07

I've got an odd problem. A dvd drive keeps on showing up on my computer, but there's not one there, and I never had this one installed. If I click properties it says SCSI cd rom device, though when looking with windows explorer in "my computer" it says dvd device; it doesn't say what brand it's supposed to be. I've gone into device manager and uninstalled it, but it shows back up when I restart. I can't find out how to keep it from installing itself. Any ideas?

11:58 / 02.11.07

If you definitely haven't installed some new hardware recently, then you might be seeing a software-emulated dvd drive. Have you used a program such as Daemon Tools to mount an image of a dvd recently?

13:28 / 13.11.07

Sorry, I'm back to harassing people in this thread again. I've tried poking around on the Googles but everything I find seems to talk as though everyone has Windows XP Pro. I have XP Home, which apparently makes a big difference.

Anyway. Laptop + water = not a good combination. New laptop bought, and then attempt to put old hard drive into it resulting in blue screening. On the other hand, the old hard drive clearly isn't completely dead: if I plug it into an external enclosure I can access anything I want except what I really want to access, which is the My Documents folder. I assume this has to do with it being a private folder of a password-protected user account, so does anyone know how I can get into it? Bonus points for anyone who can tell me it's actually possible to save the whole hard drive, because it's twice the size of the one in the new laptop.

15:23 / 13.11.07

Aha, got it - start in safe mode, play with security permissions. Restart every time it starts talking about I/O errors.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

11:47 / 14.11.07

Hmmm, this may seem a really stupid question to anyone even slightly hardware literate; but how would one go about upgrading one's Graphics Card on a PC?

Firstly I'd be hugely grateful if anyone could tell me how to figure out what's compatible with my motherboard, since I'm seeing a dizzying array of cards online, and I really have no idea about the sort of specs they quote that ought to tell me if they're compatible.

Secondly is the actual physical task of switching graphics cards a difficult thing for someone who is only averagely stupid and clumsy? My computer really needs it if it's to be able to continue to play games, but the whole idea frightens me quite a lot.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:16 / 14.11.07

OK - depending on the age of your motherboard, it will have a 2xAGP, 4xAGP, 8xAGP or PCI-Express slot for graphics cards - or two, if it is an SLI or Crossfire friendly motherboard.If you don't have any of these, you _can_ buy PCI graphics cards, but you'd probably have to be on crack to do so.

Once you know what slot you have, you know pretty much what graphics cards you can run - pretty well anything that fits the slot, usually. If you have onboard graphics now, they will shut down automatically when the graphics card is detected - that is, when the drivers are installed.

Actually installing the card is not too tricky - you just open up the box and slot the card into the slot, like a PCI card.

One thing to be careful of is power - the card will usually draw power from the power supply of your PC, so if it needs more power than the power supply can provide, it will shut down your computer. Big, modern cards sometimes have their own power supply, which draws down power from the mains, but unless you have a very serious setup which just happens not to have a graphics card for some reason, this is probably not what you are looking for. Another issue is space - many cards are sufficiently bulky to take up the space of another card slot, and the really big ones are often lousy with heat sinks and fans.

Do you know your motherboard, processor, how much RAM you have, and so on? And what sort of games are you looking to play?

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

13:42 / 14.11.07

Thanks. My CPU is an Athlon 64 3000, and I've currently 512mb of memory, although I'm intending to order another gig to make that up to 1.5 this evening. Motherboard wise I think it's called an Asus K8V Deluxe, certainly something along those lines, although I'll have to try to figure out how to establish the exact details when I get home as I understand there might be more than one version and I'm not exactly sure which mine is.

Gamewise I'm resigned to not being able to play DirectX 10 games when they start to come out as that's going to require a whole new system, but at the moment I'm interested in a few games that have come out recently, mainly The Witcher, and Hellgate: London, which won't currently play on my system at all, due to lack of memory, and which might just about run on my current GeForce FX card, but will probably be almost unplayable. I'd also like to be able to run Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights 2, WoW, and similar without having to turn all the settings right down, and still suffer some fairly awful slowdown. So really it's mainly the latest generation of shiny RPGS i'm into.

14:01 / 14.11.07

I have the same CPU and had in the past the same board (don't be alarmed, it served me well - not its fault it died). I think the best card you can get for such a setup is some model of ATI X1950 Pro. You're looking for an AGP card (x8, although no one sells anything else nowadays).
You should also think about upgrading your memory to 2gig or so - the board supports the old DDR ram sticks, not DDR2, and it is getting more expensive in its obsolescence.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:12 / 14.11.07

Yeah - the bottlenecks might be your processor and RAM rather than the graphics card, but that could work. The other question, then, is what sort of a power supply you have, and also, I guess, whether you want to go for ATI or NVidia. I was going to suggest the GeForce 7600 as a mid-range DirectX9-optimised option. I think the 8 series are PCI-X only, and you have an 8xAGP slot, by the sound of it. Hellgate:London theoretically will run with your spec (plus the extra 1GB of RAM) and any graphics card above a GeForce 6200, for reference... what do you have at present?

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

14:34 / 14.11.07

My memory seems to have betrayed me on that score - it's one of the Nvidia FX 5500 or 5600 cards, but I'd have to check when I get home to know exactly which one. I have managed to get games which claim they need a 6200 as a minimum to run, on it occasionally, indeed Jade Empire actually runs a heck of a lot better than say Oblivion. My main motivation behind getting a card now, is that I find I have just under £200 available to soup up my computer now, and wanted to start with memory, since it's reasonably cheap, and indeed easy. I considered blowing a good proportion of the money on memory and going up to 3 gig, but on consideration I suppose anything that won't play with 1.5gb won't play with my current graphics card anyway, so I thought it better to spread the money around a bit.

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