Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

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OK, so our broadband coonection finally seems to be working, however, we've got a linksys wireless router and a linksys card, only about twenty metres apart with no real big walls in the way either, and the best signal I can get is 3 bars out of ten on my b'band monitor :o(

downloads are running at only about 2.3 kbps, which is bleeding slower than when I was on dial-up. Anyone got any ideas (apart from running a cable the length of the house)

― Porkpie (porkpie), Sunday, 15 August 2004 10:57 (twenty-one years ago)

are you sure you are successfully connecting to your router as opposed to someone elses nearby? that would explain the poor signal.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:43 (twenty-one years ago)

things you should do to your wireless router:

1. change the name from "linksys" or "netgear"
2. turn off SSID broadcast
3. enable WEP
4. enable MAC filtering
5. password protect router from generic ADMIN password

if you have a WRT54G you can install better firmware from sveasoft.com which will boost your signal, give you bandwidth management options, and a multitude of other cool shit.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:45 (twenty-one years ago)

cool, thanks Cutty, it's definitely ours, I just moved the pooter out of the cupboard and bosted the signal to 5 bars and am getting a better download now, much better in fact.

― Porkpie (porkpie), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:47 (twenty-one years ago)

and now a dumb set of questions - that stuff you tell me to do, (changing password and changing name apart, I can see why to do that) what does it do/why is it beneficial?

― Porkpie (porkpie), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:51 (twenty-one years ago)

porkpie, do you live in a densely populated area? basically these are precautions against someone else hopping on your network, stealing bandwidth, and generally being capable of doing BAD THINGS to your computer/network/etc if they really wanted to.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:54 (twenty-one years ago)

My free wireless internet seems to be very intermittent. The network is always there, with decent enough signal strength, but half the time I get stuck on that DHCP self-assigned IP address shit. I googled the problem and it seems to be quite common, even when one isn't robbing someone else's connection, which makes me a bit worries about this whole wireless thing when I actually get my own ADSL next month.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 15 August 2004 12:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Cutty, we are yes, but I can't trace any other servers/routers. What is WEP for instance and the ssid? The router set-up says to be careful over switching these.

The speeds are cracking at the moment, which is good, we just have to leave the box out of the cupboard.

― Vicky (Vicky), Sunday, 15 August 2004 12:27 (twenty-one years ago)

two weeks pass...

I have a cable modem connection, yet when I share files via slsk or AIM, etc., the transfer speeds are incredibly slow. What am I doing wrong?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Sunday, 29 August 2004 21:11 (twenty-one years ago)

help this man out

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 29 August 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

help me to help YOU!

― adam. (nordicskilla), Sunday, 29 August 2004 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

is the download speed slow too, or just your upload speed? I vaguely remember that they capped upload speeds when I had a cable modem (different ISP).

― kyle (akmonday), Sunday, 29 August 2004 23:32 (twenty-one years ago)

kind of both.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Sunday, 29 August 2004 23:56 (twenty-one years ago)

bump

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 14:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Hard to say without looking but some ideas:

1) your firewall (if you have one) may be interfering
2) their firewall (if they have one) may be interfering
3) their connection speed (if they have one) may be much much slower, especially if they are on 56k, isdn, or DSL. (DSL upload speed is usually much slower than download)
4) HA HA YOU EFFED IT UP

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Monday, 30 August 2004 14:55 (twenty-one years ago)

My firewall is definitely switched off.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

There's also the possibility that your provider may have throttled down speeds for specific types of data to prevent people in your area from suffering for your downloading. If you're just getting this problem using a P2P program, it's a possibility.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, it happend when I send files though AIM as well.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Actually, it happens when I send files though AIM as well.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:24 (twenty-one years ago)

There's your problem - it's uploading all the data packets twice over.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:30 (twenty-one years ago)

You know what my boring computer problem is? That the Sims 2 isn't coming out on Mac!!!!!

― Homosexual II (Homosexual II), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

What kind of connection to the Internet do you have? Are you using a modem or a router?

― bert (bert), Monday, 30 August 2004 21:43 (twenty-one years ago)

You know what my boring computer problem is? That the Sims 2 isn't coming out on Mac!!!!!

Incorrect. It IS coming out for the Mac.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 30 August 2004 22:09 (twenty-one years ago)

To answer Bert-I am using an external cable modem.

I have a new one now, an oldie but goodie - why do I only get, at most, 2.5 hours of battery time from my powerbook battery when it is fully charged?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 2 September 2004 00:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Reduce the number of extensions and control panels that load by using an extension manager program.

What does this mean?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 2 September 2004 01:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Argh.

Bluetooth on new superduper powerbook 15" (running panther) no longer works - says no bluetooth hardware attached, which is odd, cos it was built in.

Any ideas?

― Dave B (daveb), Friday, 3 September 2004 14:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, here's a boring question for you, and it's work-related, so that's bonus boringness. I have to send an email to about 3500 people from my Microsoft Outlook work account. However, I was dumb enough to point out that maybe the reason we were getting so many undelivered returned emails last time we did that was that we were sending them out in batches of like 400 emails or something. So now, I have to send them out in batches of no more than 20 email addresses at a time. This, of course, means that I will be sending 175 seperate emails, copying the same message in to each one. Is there an easier way to do this, preferably in Microsoft Outlook?
Note: I'm not spamming people, these are all people who have registered on our website for more information.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:43 (twenty-one years ago)

That doesn't sound like a reason why you'd be getting undelievered, returned e-mails, though. A list of 3500 e-mails is going to have a bunch of people who are no longer at that e-mail -- I don't know what the typical rate is, but I wouldn't be surprised if you got 70 back that didn't work (1 in 50). The trick is going through the returned e-mails, figuring out if they didn't go through because of full mailboxes or because of nonexistant mailboxes (typos, closed work accounts, etc.) and deleting those (or marking those "do not send") in your list.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:50 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, sending them out in batches shouldn't make a difference

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:51 (twenty-one years ago)

You don't think a spam filter will take out emails that were sent to like 300 addresses at a time?

These email addresses were all taken from people who registered in the past two months, so hopefully they should be pretty up-to-date. There might be some fake ones in there though.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:53 (twenty-one years ago)

i think no more than any mass email

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:54 (twenty-one years ago)

(i'm not sure if spam filters even "bounce" emails, don't they just file them away separately or delete them?)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:55 (twenty-one years ago)

But where is the line where it becomes a "mass email"? 10 addresses? 20? 50? 100?

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I have a new one now, an oldie but goodie - why do I only get, at most, 2.5 hours of battery time from my powerbook battery when it is fully charged?

Batteries become less effective over time. Li Ion and Li Polymer are generally about 50% less effective after 2 years and pretty much dead after three.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

n/a, you should phone your ISP and ask em. These sort of policies vary from one ISP to an other. Maybe they sell a "bulk email service" or can assist you with their "web mail" or another mail software that might be better than outlook to do this job.

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Well I emailed our tech guy hoping that they can set up an autoreply email to anyone who registers, but he's pretty useless.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Nick, you should be "bcc"-ing the messages, so all your members (or whatever) don't get all the other members' e-mail addresses. If it's bcc'd, there's no way for the other computers to know that you're sending it out to 3500 people, because that information is stripped before it gets to the other computer (or at least, it better be).

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, OK, I have been bcc'ing it, so that's interesting. Hmmm. So theoretically I shouldn't have any problem with spam filters then.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:22 (twenty-one years ago)

probably just defunct addresses then!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:23 (twenty-one years ago)

when I try to access my maxtor portable drive I got a message asking me to format it as if it was new but there was around 180 gig of data in it.

I remember there was some files in it that looked corrupted after I used it with a windows me so I think that was it.

I think I'll ask a data recovery guy to look at it this afternoon. Even if they can't do anything it turns out I'm pretty zen about it all.
It would be sweet if I could spare myself that (between 200 and 500$)expense , anyone got a tip by any chance, diagnostic tool or ?

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 16:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Thanks for everyone's help, BTW. I told my boss that some "friends" had said that the number of people I was sending the email to shouldn't cause the returned emails if I'm BCC'ing the names, and she had me email our useless tech guy and ask him, so hopefully he'll concur and I can go back to sending them to 300 people at a time.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 17:32 (twenty-one years ago)

(i'm not sure if spam filters even "bounce" emails, don't they just file them away separately or delete them?)

Some do bounce them at the server - it depends how they're configured. Some servers will bounce mail that has nothing in the To: field, because of spammers using the BCC: field to send an email to hundreds of addresses at once (as described above).

At my last job, we had a (legit) mailing list with a couple of thousand addresses on it, and would receive a couple of hundred bounces on each run, from out-of-date addresses, full mailboxes, and so on. To send, though, we used a simple Perl script I wrote to generate a separate email for each recipient and pause a few seconds between each one; it avoided overloading our mailserver.

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Plus if you're clever like Caitlin, you can have people's names in the database and you can send out e-mails that say "Dear Nick" in them. And you can use the "to:" field, thus avoiding the "bcc blockers". It's dreamy!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 21:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Sebastien, Diskwarrior or drive 10 may well be your friend here. Diskwarrior has saved my main disk on more than one occasion.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 09:55 (twenty-one years ago)

I owe a big "THANK YOU" to everyone who replied to my question. I did a test this morning. I sent an email to 100 recipients. I got 7 undelivered returns. So I resent the email to each of those 7 people individually, and they bounced back again, proving that the problem is with the addresses, not the way I'm sending them. I took this to my boss, and now I can send the emails in large batches again, saving me huge loads of time, which I can spend on ILX. EVERYONE WINS, HOORAH!

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

did your boss give you a big kiss on the forehead?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 19:01 (twenty-one years ago)

No, she didn't really give a shit.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 19:20 (twenty-one years ago)

at least she didn't give a shit on your forehead!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 19:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Why is my (Windows) computer showing some apostrophes/single quotes as blocks? For instance this - ’ - appears as a speckled square, and this - ”- as a black square. Does everyone else see this in this post at least? Meanwhile, the apostrophe in slocki's post immediately above is fine.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Thursday, 9 September 2004 19:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, the very writing of the problem cleared my mind, and IE was set to the wrong language as seemed immediately obvious.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Thursday, 9 September 2004 19:18 (twenty-one years ago)

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