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Computer help needed!

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15:25 / 16.06.06

Ahh. That Crucial site is great, and informs me that since an iBook only has one slot, I gather upgrading would mean buying a new stick of at least 1GB and throwing away the 512MB I’ve already got. Bugger.
Nothing to see here.

17:56 / 16.06.06

I’ve been thinking about beefing up my G4 iBook and that is exactly how much the Apple Store tells me I need to spend. Could I get a compatible stick elsewhere considerably cheaper?

By the sounds of it you've already decided against the upgrade but I'll say this anyway: I'm almost 100% convinced that you could indeed just stick any old RAM (as long as it was compatible with your mobo of course) in there without having to be financially fucked by Apple. RAM is RAM is RAM as far as I know and, certainly, trying to convince you that over-priced Apple branded stuff was neccesary when really it wasn't would fit their usual approach to stuff.

18:03 / 16.06.06

Cheers, Bamba. Maybe I'll be able to buy a gig of generic RAM for the price I was contemplating spending on 512MB of Apple's.

18:08 / 16.06.06

I sort of forgot that it was a laptop we're talking about so RAM is more expensive than for a desktop but I had a quick look at Crucial's UK site and they're doing 512MB of iBook compatible RAM for £64, which would imply that 1GB wouldn't cost you too much more than Apple's price for 512MB. But, the highest single module capacity they offer is 512MB and, with the size restrictions on iBook RAM modules, it's possible that you simply can't go up to 1GB with only one memory slot. Which surprised me a bit but I'd imagine that if such a thing existed Crucial would sell it so you might be stuck with 512 no matter what dude.

Note: everything I've just said comes only from poking about on the net for five minutes so it's not unlikely that someone will come along and show me I'm talking utter nonsense.

14:39 / 18.06.06

Imaginary Mice - DDR and DDR2 are not compatible with each other (and not compatible on the same motherboard, with some rare exceptions), so you need to make absolutely sure which one you have. Getting a slightly faster rated type of RAM shouldn't matter, though, it'll just run at the speed of the slower RAM.

It looks like the Dell you've got came with different motherboards, some of which supported DDR and some DDR2, so the only way to tell is going to be to open it up and look at the RAM. Also, it looks like this machine does have dual channel RAM, so you need to be looking at removing both of your 256MB sticks and replacing them with two (identical) 512MBs instead of just swapping out the broken DIMM.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

00:56 / 19.07.06

Fucking Windows!

Every time I started my computer, bastard Microsoft kept poking at me to download some stupid software verification thing, which I wanted no part of, but I couldn't figure out how to make it go away. So, my SO used my PC the other day, and, thinking that it was something good for me, downloaded the thing. Now it tells me that my copy of Windows is not genuine, and it's fucking up my computer and making it run all slow and bootleg. This cannot continue. I got this laptop second-hand, so I don't know, or care, whether my copy is valid or not. All I know is that it worked fucking peachy keen the other day and now it runs like molasses.

Please help!

22:29 / 19.07.06

Can you do a System Restore back to before your SO downloaded it? (under Acessories->System Tools). It should turn the clock back on everything...

22:49 / 19.07.06

Apparently you can disable these pop-ups, this from Microsoft's site:

You can temporarily disable Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications. To do this, right-click the Notifier icon in the notification area and select Change Notifications Settings. Then, follow the prompts. This will disable the Notification Prompts until a new release of the Notification Update is released..

There are of course more hardcore and less legit ways around the thing:

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/04/workarounds-to-disable-non-genuine.html

16:45 / 18.08.06

I'm having some fun right here. Quite frequently, but not always, but laptop's keyboard will start acting like the shift key is depressed, selecting everythig the mouse moves over, typing in caps and using secondary function punctuation and opening links in new windows.

Is this some kind of bug (I know that's hardcore not likely, but computers really worry me a lot) or a dick in the membrane? (Keyboard stopped registering every stroke about six months ago, but having a second keyboard plugged into the side doesn't seem to perk things up any).

Thanks.

16:49 / 18.08.06

you're haunted!

seriously can you tell us what kind of system you're on? Model and OS is a great place to start.

Any run ins with droppage, liquids, bad cats, installed downloaded anything odd recently?

Are you running any antivirus software?

16:56 / 18.08.06

seriously can you tell us what kind of system you're on?
HP Pavillion ze4200, running whatever Microsoft were giving away when it was brought 3 1/2 years ago.

Any run ins with droppage, liquids, bad cats, installed downloaded anything odd recently?
Soulseek, etc.

Are you running any antivirus software?
Um... er... no.

Disco is My Class War

08:08 / 19.08.06

This is going to sound like a stupid question, probably. I've got mad problems with my Win XP PC. It's locked in Safe Mode, but the Safe Mode display settings conlifct with my LCD screen, and the screen just shows up black with a little red rectangle saying 'Out of Range' and giving the horizontal and vertical settings. (Which are wrong, according to the screen manual.) Safe Mode is locked because I stupidly set it to safemode in msconfig, through BOOT.INI.

I don't know what to do. Have tried various things. First I booted from the WINXP CD and ran the automatic Recover/Repair program. Then I tried bootcfg/rebuild in the XP CD recovery console, etc. Nothing's working.

So, my question -- is there a way to clean install Win XP without losing applications, documents etc? Or am I doomed to take the computer back to the repair shop? (Just got it back yesterday cause the mainboard died and I had to replace it. It's mad, bad tech karma month in the House of Disco.)

12:05 / 19.08.06

How about booting to DOS somehow (I think the CD lets you do this, and possibly also the safe mode boot menu, too F6? F8? while booting) and using edit.com (which lurks in windows/sytem32/) to change back whatever you did in boot.ini?

13:02 / 19.08.06

You could, if you can't get into the recovery console to change things, try booting into something like Damn Small Linux and see if you can mount the hard disk to make changes there. It'll be risky though, as Linux support for writing to NTFS partitions isn't 100%. The safest way would be to put the disk into another Windows machine that boots fine, copy across the stuff you need, then reformat/reinstall.

Disco is My Class War

13:35 / 19.08.06

Thanks so much for the tips. I wound up reinstalling XP clean. So, lots of hassle to come, software reinstalls, etc, but at least I have a desktop.

It turns out that the computer repair shop dude didn't install my mainboard drivers properly, or tinkered with the video driver without reinstalling it. I have no video driver, hence the weird problems with the resolution. The refresh display settings were down around 35/45 kHz, which is not viable for display resolutions over 800x600. Every time it started in Safe Mode, it must have been trying to boot up in 1280/1024 (which is weird anyhow. but whatever.)

Am now downloading the proper video driver from Asus. Bless the bloody internet.

15:22 / 20.08.06

Miss Weaving - I know it's probably a bit late, but... you need to get a 512 chunk of RAM for you iBook. I had a G4, which I upgraded to 1 gig by adding another 512 piece. I think there's 512 already built in (assuming the G4 models remain roughly the same). I think 1 gig is the limit for the iBook.

And yes. NEVER buy RAM from the Apple website. Or anything else if you can help it. I saw them trying to charge me £400 for a RAM upgrade for my new MacBook. I can buy near-identical RAM for £150 on other sites...

,,Pin - Have you looked at the accessibility settings in control panel? (I think that's what it's called.. I think it has a symbol of someone in a wheelchair or something..) There's a thing in Windows where you can hold down the shift button for 5 seconds to turn on 'sticky keys'; lets you use shift without having to hold it down - handy for some. You can turn it off in the mentioned control panel. I think that's what it's called, but have a litttle browse if it isnt...

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

13:31 / 28.08.06

My work Mac (OS X, 10.4.7) has been making an r-r-r-r-r-r-r noise quietly through the headphones for about a week now, and it's driving me nuts.

I thought it might be the headphones, but I'm trying new headphones and it's still droning away in the background. And it does the same thing whether I use the jack on the box or the jack on the monitor, so I assume this isn't the jack either. Which means... software? Something wrong with whatever works as a sound card in these things?

It's continuous from boot to shutdown, regardless of what software I have open. Everything sounds normal, but under a constant stuttery hum that sounds like a flourescent light on its last legs.

13:40 / 28.08.06

Or interference from something else. Is your monitor or main unit close to another Mac/PC or anything else that uses a lot of power?

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

14:25 / 28.08.06

Oh, forgot: the mutter/hum is unaffected by volume on the Mac, either. Even if system sound is down and all programs shut, it mutterhums away.

Not close to anything else, really. An uninterruptible power supply, the box and the monitor... that's it for about a ten-foot radius.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

14:15 / 29.08.06

something continuous like that is probably leaking power from somewhere. If it's not related to the ups (try plugging it into the wall while you're not doing anything crucial with it, if you're able), it's probably something to do with the fan in the power supply. If they get a bit blocked/slowed (dust, mostly), they can start drawing irregular power, and feed weird interference through speakers.

If the volume of the interference is constant, and you can turn up the volume of whatever you need to listen to, some headphones with their own volume adjusting device could help. Set them so that you can't hear the interference, and then just turn up your computer's volume until you can hear the music at the appropriate level. That's what I'd do, anyway.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:51 / 29.08.06

After unplugging everything from the box -- noise stops -- and plugging everything back in, it turned out to be the audio cable running from the back of the Mac to the monitor. So I've just got headphones jacked into the Mac box itself. Screw you, Sony monitor. I don't need your sound nohow.

20:43 / 10.12.06

The new Windows Media Player is driving me nuts with it's suckiness... can anyone recommend a good program (a music player) to replace it?

21:43 / 10.12.06

Can't really go wrong with winamp can you? I'm sure people will come up with something a bit more fancy but winamp is at least better than windows media player....

And BSplayer for movies.

21:45 / 10.12.06

Actually not bsplayer I just remember that it now comes bundled with annoying spyware program so Windows media player classic or VLC player for movies (not that you asked).

07:56 / 02.02.07

My laptop seems to have shat it. I'm told the graphics chip has died. It boots up ok, it just doesn't like me seeing what it does. I've tried an external monitor and the telly everything is just black.

Before I take it back to the shop next week is there any cheap and easy way to get the data from the hard drive as I get the feeling I won't see it again. I've got a desktop which was set up on a wireless network with it until the router also died and I think the desktop is set up for the remote desktop thingy on the laptop??

Any ideas?

07:57 / 02.02.07

Oh and both are running XP home.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

10:41 / 02.02.07

depending on your warranty situation etc, it might be easiest to buy an external HDD mount, for a laptop sized HDD, and plug it in to your desktop machine via USB.

I bought one for $9AU the other day, which is approximately nothing, in real money (mine is a Ritmo, and the hdd just plugs right into it, and it into the pc, no problem). If you can find one cheap, they're very useful for situations like these.

Otherwise, remote desktop requires you to authorise things on the machine being looked at, I think, which will be difficult, without being able to see what's going on.

11:30 / 02.02.07

Buying a USB drive enclosure for the laptop hard drive would almost definitely work so that's a goer in itself, but if the two machines are already on the same network then you don't need to use Remote Desktop to access one from the other, you'll already be able to just browse them over the network.

In normal circumstances you would only be able to see the folders that you'd specifically set to 'shared', but there's a way around that. For reasons I've never understood, Windows automatically shares the entire hard drive of any machine on a network which you can then get into as long as you've got a valid login. So, on your desktop, type the following into the Run box:

\\ip address of the latop\C$

Assuming C is the drive letter of the laptop hard drive of course. This might present you with a login prompt so just login with whatever user and password you use when accessing the laptop directly. Hopefully that'll give you full access to the laptop hard drive and you can pull off whatever you want.

11:36 / 02.02.07

They are on the same network but due to the death of my router they ain't talking. Is it a cross-over ethernet I need to get them on talking terms again?

11:50 / 02.02.07

They are on the same network but due to the death of my router they ain't talking. Is it a cross-over ethernet I need to get them on talking terms again?

Yeah, that would certainly work for networking two machines together in general but there's practically no chance in hell of being able to set it up when you can't view the screen on one of them. Currently the router's doing a lot of the networking legwork for you, with that out of the equation you'd need to do a lot more setup on the machines themselves to get a crossover network up and running, which isn't feasible obviously when you can't see what's happening on the laptop.

The USB drive enclosure has suddenly leapt to pole position in your available options here I think.

07:29 / 05.02.07

How do I "empty a DCS cache"?

11:06 / 05.02.07

How do I "empty a DCS cache"?

Any chance of some context?

11:43 / 05.02.07

Are you sure you don't mean 'Empty DNS cache'?

10:10 / 09.02.07

I'm using a laptop with a wireless card. We have a secured network in our house, and everybody else seems to use it just fine.

It seems to hate me, however. This laptop invariably takes half an hour or more to find the network and connect after I boot, and sometime its take up to an hour and a half. Also, sometimes in the day the network connection just drops.

I just don't get it. The signal is always there, right? Should I just blame atmospheric anomaly like I do for everything else?

12:33 / 09.02.07

Assuming Windows XP here... Have you installed all the software (connection manager, things that flash in an appealing way, random other stuff) that came with the card? If so, it might be worth trying uninstalling everything that came with the card (using add/remove programs) apart from the driver that Windows actually needs, and using the interface that's built into XP. You might find a market improvement (particularly if you're using an Apple Airport base-station, but same applies to others, too).

The software that hardware's bundled with is often of poor quality... apparently MS's in-house name for these little pieces of code is "craplets", which I rather like. Anyway, they break stuff and get in the way.

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