new boring computer questions

No drive letter but it detects the USB. If I go to system under control panel and device manager it does list it as USB device with a question mark next to it.

What odes FAT stand for? There is nothing on my external drive at the mo (I have another laptop with XP, and I intend on using the external drive to back the stuff in that laptop with it)

ah right, first thing to do is check what kind of problem the question mark relates to (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/tp/device_manager_error_codes.htm) - assuming it's a yellow question mark of course. If it's green then I've no idea. This might well be to do with that .SYS file above, so if you can download that from somewhere and drop it into the relevant folder so much the better.

FAT (File Allocation Table) and NTFS (New Technology File System) are just different types of Windows file systems. Win Me uses the (older) FAT system, XP etc use NTFS - this is not backwards compatible so a device formatted with NTFS will not work on a PC using FAT.

Not really,

XP can use FAT32 on its system drive and still read NTFS partitions.

It's true that only Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 can read and write NTFS though.

NTFS has many advantages over FAT32 the main one being security and the ability to have files over 4GB.

It sounds like Windows ME has no drivers for your USB mass storage controller, this may or may not be resolvable depending on the make/model USB drive in question.

I'm pretty sure Windows ME had a generic USB mass storage driver though.

However it may not work with your USB drive, your best bet is to take the HDD out of the laptop and use a USB HDD chassis to copy the music to another PC.

That's a fair suggestion, but xyzzz should bear a few things in mind: You'll very probably need a 2.5" IDE USB caddy for the laptop HDD to go into. And there will be some unscrewing of covers and disconnection of cables involved in removing the HDD from the laptop.

Under the circumstances the original idea using an MP3 player is probably less hassle.

btw, Bill, it was green not yellow - going with the mp3 idea for now

No idea how a laptop is built generally so I'm not gonna mess. Again, for now.

hope the mp3 idea works. I really do.

Again - good luck. If the MP3 player has been recognised over USB on the laptop before then you should be ok to drag and drop files onto it, and to do the same onto your XP PC.

One final suggestion: 16GB USB pen drives can be bought for about £15 these days (and maybe less if you have a look around). afaik Win Me only uses USB1 so the data transfer onto the drive would be a pretty slow, but once it's off the laptop your XP machine should have no problems. And you can obv reuse the pen drive for other stuff.

"a pretty slow process" !

boring computer questions: how to i capture the audio on a streaming website, if i wanted to do such a thing

Silentbob works ok?

hmmmm is that for macintosh

some streaming websites are just widgets that are embedded into web pages and if you look at the page source one of the arguments is often a link to the proper mp3. so i'd look at that first.

normally you'd just have to pick 'stereo mix' or something similar in your recording software (audacity is free and capable). but increasingly pc manufacturers are disabling this kind of stuff either in the drivers or in the hardware - my new laptop for instance. the work computer does. is kinda dull because it has to be real time and any noises the computer makes whilst you're recording (incoming email, say) will also get recorded.

Anyone know much about packet loss and how to reduce it? I bought COD: Modern Warfare 2 the other day, and although my connection is great (usually my average ping is <10ms), I realized I have a pretty shitty packet loss problem. I hadn't realized until now because I hadn't played an online FPS since moving to Maryland and starting up with Verizon. Basically, the problem is that every 6 or 7 seconds, consistently, the action freezes for about a second, and then resumes, no matter which server I'm on. After dying for about the billionth time because of this, I'm resolved to try to fix this.

Here is a link to a quick line quality (packet loss) test I ran last night: http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2612980

The 100% packet loss hops I'm not too worried about, according to some random stuff I read last night while attempting to research this (I know next to nothing about computers, networks, internet connections and especially packet loss). The 12% loss at the closest hop, and the 7% and 9% on the Verizon hops, is the one that probably needs to be addressed, and that maybe I can do something about.

Can anyone suggest router settings, settings for my network card, additional tests I can perform, troubleshooting, or anything else?

You need to talk to your ISP, the packet loss is very unlikely to be the fault of your equipment, oh and dump MW2 and get the BFBC2 beta.

Remember that MW2 has no dedicated servers and runs hosted on other peoples PCs this is why there was such a huge backlash by PC gamers about it.

Try another game that has dedicated servers (COD4, BF2, TF2) and see what your connection is like.

Remember that MW2 has no dedicated servers and runs hosted on other peoples PCs this is why there was such a huge backlash by PC gamers about it.

Yeah, I'm def aware of that, but the pause in gameplay happens in the exact same way, every time I play - perfectly smooth for 6 or 7 seconds, a one second pause, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I'll give Verizon a call tomorrow, I suppose. I'm just dreading it because I know I'll have to go through an hours worth of troubleshooting before they finally agree that it's a problem with packet loss.

sorry man, i feel for you. hate going through that song and dance

It's ok, I actually haven't had to deal with it for a very long time, so I guess I'm due!

tbh I knew that I was probably going to have to call the ISP to fix it, but I'd kick myself if there was some quick fix I could do on my own instead.

HELP!!!

When I switch on my monitor I get the logo of the hardware supplier for about a minute, then nothing - a blank screen. It can't be the picture tube on the monitor because otherwise I wouldn't get the logo either. The last time I was able to use it I had just done the malware and spyware checks and the anti-malware had found stuff it was not able to get rid of. I had recently been trying to download RAR files.

For the last few weeks I had been runnung exclusicvely on Firefox because the firewall had gone up for IE.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Hi there,

I haver a pretty old G4 aluminum Powerbook that doesn't seem to want to connect to the internet. It seems to accept Wifi signals (and broadcast itunes on my home network) but will not connect no matter what browser I use.

Any ideas? Thanks!

is there any way to check the internet connection with any other device?

open system preferences, click network, click ethernet. do you ahve a valid IP address?

i bet your DNS address is wrong. find out what ISP you have, figure out what their default dns server is and put that address in the dns field.

or use a public dns server like 8.8.8.8 (google) or 4.2.2.3

(or both, you have multiple slots)

if you have a router it will do DNS forwarding, just let DHCP set it up for you.

Hi there,

I haver a pretty old G4 aluminum Powerbook that doesn't seem to want to connect to the internet. It seems to accept Wifi signals (and broadcast itunes on my home network) but will not connect no matter what browser I use.

Any ideas? Thanks!

― admrl, Wednesday, June 2, 2010 2:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Pour. A Pint. Of Beer. In It.

admrl - is the airport saying that it has a 'self-assigned ip address'? if so, you may need to trash your network, airport, &c. prefs which are located in... uhh... /libraries/preferences/network or something?

don't worry as your mac will create new, virgin pref files upon a reboot

Thanks all! Trashed the prefs and it seems to work. I'm extremely grateful.

OK I got a new one for you.

I am trying to install Vidalia/Tor using Firefox and running SNow Leopard, but always get the message that "Vidalia is unable to start tor" and that I should check my executable settings. Could this be a firewall issue? I also use a static ip and am wondering if this could be an issue...Just want to watch the World CUp on the BBC!

only a guess, but maybe you need to run as admin, or
chmod 755 path_to_tor_executable
under terminal wherever the tor executable is

This one's simple: my mom wants to buy a new computer but I haven't followed current computer hardware technology in 5+ years and have no idea what to even look for these days. Are we at a point where everything's sort of a level playing field and you just pick up the cheapest thing you can find at Best Buy?

She uses it for email, word processing, and the like. No one really uses it for gaming or anything. I mean, are there any specific things I should avoid?

i suspect the easy answer is still just to get a Dell or HP, but take anyone's word over mine

you can't go wrong these days, get a Dell/HP cheap is fine.

I had better luck with a refurbished cheap computer from Micro Center than I had with a similarly priced new Dell in the last several months.

You still have to remove all the crapware, and you still have a warranty, but some of the parts are better and less likely to fail and if there is a problem, the shop and employees are local. If there is one in your area, it could be worth a look.

are there any major brands that don't preload crapware and plaster stickers all over the device as a courtesy?

www.apple.com

:D

I backup all my video projects to a second drive, but on the last attempt, I get the error code -36 file can't be read or written for my capture scratch file. I tried using Disk Utility to fix it but the backup still hangs once it gets to this file. All my project files, etc are safe, so it is really just the capture scratch/raw video files that are the issue. What's the best course of action for a potentially corrupted file like this? Delete the whole thing and recapture? I seem to be able to still open the file and work from it/save to it, it just will NOT copy over.

need more details. operating system, disk format, file size.

i have a sneaking suspicion that the file is too large for the destination disk (either due to lack of space there or because of file system limits)

OS 10.6.4, two 500gb G-Drives bothextended Journalled. Drive 1 has 140gb being used. Drive 2 (backup drive) about 300gb used (this includes the last backup of drive 1 which should be replaced by new backup). Capture Scratch (the file that cannot be transferred is the biggest folder I am trying to move, so perhaps it is a space issue? Maybe I should erase old backup before making new one, but of course this seems risky and not clever.

is the file over 16GB? maybe it is hitting some maximum filesize barrier. compress before backup perhaps?

Compress before backup - that's a neato idea. Will try.

Is there a smarter way to backup from one drive to another other than copying all the files over once a week? Should I be creating an archive of the first disk instead maybe?

incremental backups (which is what time machine does, i believe) - saves everything the first time, saves differences from then on. (using hard links so that you can nuke early versions to free up space without losing files. am using dirvish on linux to do this (which uses rsync under the covers), takes 15 minutes a week)

i've got a frustrating problem with my pc at the moment. whenever i'm playing a processor-intensive game, like assassins creed2 or just cause 2, it'll run fine for 15 mins then BSOD on me, with various reasons. it's done this for months but i've recently worked out that it's due to my graphics card overheating. i installed SIW and flipping between the 'sensor' tab on that and the game shows how the card temperature slowly increases, and when it gets to around 78 degrees it just switches off the entire pc. i guess it's a safety precaution so it doesn't burn out the card completely.

this usually takes about 15-20 mins, so i play the game for a bit, switch back to desktop for a couple of minutes to let it cool down then begin playing again. it's a bit annoying but manageable. however i installed mafia 2 yesterday which must use up even more power than the previous games because when i play this the temperature of the graphics card rockets up much faster, so it reaches BSOD level in about 5 minutes or less. this makes the game pretty unplayable - it's like watching a film and pausing it every few minutes!

does anyone have any suggestions for how to deal with this? i'm not too clued-up on the inner workings of my pc but i'm looking for a cheap and easy way of cooling down my graphics card. would another fan help? is a water-cooling system a pain to set up?

remove the side panels and point a fan at your internals

also suck up all the dust inside with a vacuum cleaner (careful to not damage anything, I sucked off a few resistors from my MacBooks logic board)

i was wondering about that fan thing, is it safe? i wondered if it might end up firing more dust into the inner workings of the pc and screw it up. will definitely try it though, and hoover it often. cheers!

it's safe - airflow more important than dust imo

winner, i've taken the side panel off and moved it to a place with more airflow and it's already loads cooler. thanks again dayo!