new boring computer questions

I've got a problem with my laptop in that there is a problem with the screen. Picture below shows the logon screen. Once logged on the text appears fuzzy, however it is not like this all the time, it's an intermittent fault. At the moment I'm using it and the screen is fine, but it could come back any time.

So do I need a new screen, or is it just a dodgy connection? If so how difficult or easy would it be to fix it?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1120/574730046_9b6332f0c7.jpg?v=0

Are you running at the native screen resolution?

(FP2 did you ever get flash working on your 64 bit linux box?
i tried this and it seems fine: http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/projects/nspluginwrapper/)

Yes koogs - but clunkily. I installed both the mozilla-firefox and mozilla-firefox-bin packages; and I switch from one to the other whenever I want to watch Youtube or whatever. It has the side effect that I am protected from annoying Flash when I don't want it.

xxpost
Yes, I haven't changed any of the settings. I'm going to download the driver to see if that makes any difference, but as I said in my earlier post the fault is intermittent so I suspect it's a hardware problem.

hard drive question. i have two hard drives in my pc, one a boot disk with all my windows and program files on, the other a simple storage for all my documents

i turned it all off at the wall socket while i went on holiday recently, and now it won't recognise my second hard drive. I have to unplug it otherwise it takes my computer ages to boot up.

both SATA drives. is it fooked? why?

(sorry, should have been clearer, "I have to unplug the second hard drive now from the motherboard, otherwise it takes ages to boot up")

My computer died on it's arse a couple of weeks ago. Mostly fine now, but the @ and " symbols have switched around, so when I press the " key I get @ - minor, but pretty irritating. Any ideas how I can switch them back?

If you go to the control panel you can change your keyboard layout there, I think. You'll have to choose a UK layout instead of a US one. I could be wrong though. I'm sure somebody'll be along in a minute to give you the correct answer.

Audio CDs are occasionally prompting my PC to bring up the "autoplay" thingummy as if they are data disks, then nothing happens. Thereafter the machine refuses to recognise anything but datadisks until it is rebooted.

How to fix?

nate is correct, anna. Go into Control Panel->Regional and language settings

Holding down left shift when you insert the disc bypasses autoplay. Symptomatic treatment at best, dunno about a cure.

onimo, find your disk drive in my computer, right click and select properties. somewhere in there is the option to disable autoplay for audio cds. you can also disable it entirely if you like.

Thanks guys, will try that tonight. I think the computer just doesn't like Julian Cope or Public Image Ltd tbh. Maybe it's rejecting anything recorded before Windows...

You still have the whole of music from 1985 onwards to choose from!

> find your disk drive in my computer, right click and select properties. somewhere in there is the option to disable autoplay for audio cds. you can also disable it entirely if you like.

i do this and connecting my mp3 player still tries to autoplay it (and as it's a 20G player with about 3000 files on it, the initial scan takes a while). have just noticed, however, that you can get it to treat 'music', 'pictures' and 'mixed' devices differently. maybe that'll help.

realplayer has started adding stuff to its playlist whenever i so much as glance at them. gah. everything tries to take over everything. bad enough that i have 6 of the bastard things installed.

will stop now before i turn into the woman who writes Technobile in the guardian.

(i'd usually say that linux is so much better but i've started seeing the same thing in gnome lately)

You can turn that off in gnome though.

Right, now it isn't autoplaying but it still isn't recognising that there's an audio cd in the drive. The disk spins and the "DVD-RAM Drive (D:)" icon becomes "CD Drive (D:)" and that's it. I still can't play the CDs or rip them to mp3.

How can I do these two things which are so obvious they must be possible?

1. Make 'Paste unformatted text' the default CTRL-V action in Word.

2. Change the mouse pointer when looking at PDFs in Acrobat between the 'text select' and 'hand' versions without clicking near the top of the screen... i.e. I want to have the hand, but when I hold CTRL or something have the pointer switch to select text... like you can do in Quark.

PDF: you need to enable single key accelerators in preferences->general, then H for hand tool, V for "current selection tool". More under help->keyboard shortcuts

Thanks -- that's handy.

Earlier tonight this dipshit tech who came to my house said that whatever had happened to my computer, the best thing was to wipe the drive, reformat it and reinstall Windows XP. So anyway, it is done. And for awhile Windows XP runs normally. But when I RESTART the computer, XP does not start, it just has a black screen saying "no bootable device...press F1 to retry" and that's it. Does anyone have any ideas? What is going on here? Even if I reinstall Windows XP, the same thing happens if I restart the computer.

Was he a punk? I hear they dislike goths.

Hahah. No and he was ugly as hell, too. Thankfully this morning I decided to push F12 or whatever got me into the setup menu and when I looked around I figured out that the list of bootable devices didn't have the hard drive enabled, so I just enabled the hard drive as a "bootable device" and wallah, the problem was fixed. Still lost all my data and paid through the nose for an idiot's advice, but hey, live and learn. I really had no idea how stupid that guy was until he'd been at my house for awhile, and by then it was too late.

A fool and his money are soon par.

Eh, fuck you too.

um how do you get AV out (whatever that even is) from a macbook? is there an... adapter?

lol get a oh hang on

Macbooks have mini-dvi output for video. You get adaptors to full dvi, vga, s-video and composite from the Apple store. They're ridiculously expensive given what they are.
Audio is just headphone socket to phono or whatever.

i believe MacBooks ship with a MiniDVI to DVI adaptor. They used to.

there are adaptors, depends what the connection is on the other end. i have a mini-dvi to vga connector that i bought on ebay for a tenner (like this) and a male to male vga cable that connects to my tv.

If you got one of the brand new model Macbooks, though, you'll need one of their new mini-DisplayPort to X adapters. I think Apple is the only source for these adapters at the moment.

I have an old-gen macbook with mini-dvi

this is for my li'l bro who just has a pc (complicated by the fact tht he might get a macbook) so dunno what connections he has (what's standard?) - he is getting an optoma pico pocket projector which connects to ipods/phones/pdas whatever via their av out - I can't find any info on the www on how to connect a pc to the pico to project from tht... I dunno wht "av out" is but do know wht composite/component/dvi/mini-dvi/vga/hdmi etc are

http://www.unplggd.com/uimages/unplggd/061908optoma-pico02.jpg

^^wht is equivalent stylish white cable for the metrosexual male to go in pc/poss future macbook, is my qn

its audio/video out. how you connect to a tv.

thanknig u

wait, I don't think I've ever seen a connection to a tv with a pole jack socket; the most common low-fi method wd be s-video wouldn't it, and all the current av ninjas would connect a computer to tv via vga/hdmi. looking around it doesn't look like you can get a mini-dvi to "1 x 2.5mm 4 pole jack" adapter

looking at this shit really raises my blood pressure

yeah usually the av cords are the ones that go to the composite in of yr tv (split into 3 or 5 lines of audio/video). obv that thing is way different.

iPod video out is composite which usually goes over RCA (yellow jack) but can be routed over 2.5 mm jack ended cables mostly for small video devices.

DVI is not going to be compatible, for a computer you'd need a TV-out to make a composite signal and have RCA out or possibly and S-Video connector with a RCA convertor and set to composite in the drivers, there are RCA to 2.5mm jack cables.

That Optima Pico projector only has composite in using tha aformentioned 4pin 2.5mm jack.

http://www.optoma.co.uk/optomapico/PicoIntro.aspx

thanks, I think I understand tht; think my little bro's computer has s-video/VGA outs for video

I have a couple old Macbooks I need to get rid of. I'm not sure I can get them to boot, and I can't remember if the hard drives are encrypted. I basically want someone to tell me it's fine to take them to the local ewaste dropoff business, but what should I really do?

Oh hm maybe I should just bring them to an Apple Store

if they're ewaste anyway then might as well rip 'em open and take the hard drives out and drill through 'em a few times

you can always use the disks as backups, you don't need to trash them if you've got a use for them (and who doesn't need more space?)

Yeah I've been dreaming for years of a zfs setup where old drives just get added to the array. Sounds like work though.

Yeah I've been dreaming for years of a zfs setup where old drives just get added to the array. Sounds like work though.

bookmarked because i have the same issue and need a good solution

My question: why does it look like windows defender is taking up a shit ton of memory and slowing my computer and how can I fix this

re: old macbooks -- if they don't boot outright, depending on vintage you might be able to boot them in target disk mode so you can see if you can read them from another mac.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/transfer-files-mac-computers-target-disk-mode-mchlp1443/mac

re: plug and dump, I think the old mac XServes did this -- shame they discontinued the line!

re: win defender, these guys seem to have the same issue:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/615949/windows-defender-high-memory-usage

I did that target mode thing once

This confirms all my worst suspicions about USB-C

https://www.xda-developers.com/the-state-of-usb-is-a-mess/

Can't they put a coloured dot on them or something ?

I've only glanced through the article as I am lacking in technology knowledge. But is the outlook really that pessimistic? I thought the EU is requiring a 'common charger' based on USB C from the beginning of next year that will need to meet detailed technical standards for the port itself, the power supply, and for fast charging if the charger supports it. In the EU at least, I thought it looked reasonably hopeful that you'd be able to use the same USB C charger across products.

if i'm understanding right, it sounds like it's a mess much like micro USB (nevermind this being a connector and not a standard, I guess?) when you care about doing anything other than charging. Any cable ought to charge your phone (albeit sometimes slowly).

think the worst part is that i own a few things with usb-c ports that can only be charged if the usb-c cable is connected to a usb-a port on the other end

Oh that's weird! Haven't come across that. That part of the charging equation is a mess for sure. In an effort to not moot everyone's existing chargers, we've got all this A to C business and not the ideal C to C? I got a phone with a C charger, that was handy. Next phone had a C to C cable and no charger.

Good luck out there

Yeah, it feels like you need to check a compatibility table to figure it all out (like old Nikon lenses or smthg) but with the extra twist that the cables (esp cheaper ones) are usually completely unmarked and could be anything.

I know I can't charge my camera with A->C (only C->C) but that makes sense from a PD protocol PoV, I suppose. Found out the hard way, obv.

I was just having USB-C adventures yesterday. I have a new piece of music gear that only has a USB-C port to transfer data, and I realized that all of my myriad flash drives and cables are incompatible. So I went to the husk of an Office Depot and got a USB-C flash drive, cool.

Luckily I have one USB-C port on my new desktop PC. Weirdly, I noticed that the screen would go black for a second and then come back on when I plugged the drive in, but it worked fine. But then the next time I plugged in the usb drive, it went black, the fan started spinning up, and I couldn't shut down the computer by any means except turning the power off. Next time it worked fine. Wtf.

I wonder if your PC thought you were plugging in an external monitor? There are USB-C-powered monitors. Little tiny things. Perhaps the PC thought you were plugging in an external monitor - for some reason - and decided to switch off your main monitor. Or perhaps it had to install some drivers, and it got confused.

I have an old MOTU 828 audio interface. It uses Firewire, which was its big feature in 1999. It didn't require a PCI card. Modern Macintoshes don't have Firewire... and notice how I'm writing Firewire. Not FireWire. I've done my research! I've done my research. It's Mac mini. Mac mini. Firewire. Firewire. Thunderbolt, not ThunderBolt.

Done my research. I've done my research. I've trained myself. Two-two. Trained myself to spell millennium correctly. Two-two. Like accommodate. Two-two. I'm sorry, I'm digressing here. But I have trained myself to spell millennium correctly. I have done that. My point is that in order to use this audio interface with my 2013 Mac Pro I had to buy an official Apple Firewire->Thunderbolt adapter. For £29! For a little adapter. And now Apple no longe sells that adapter, so they're only available on eBay, for £140! I suppose I could sell mine, but I have an emotional attachment to Firewire.

See, I was a PC person in the 2000s. Which means that I was a USB person. But I was aware of Firewire. It was the interface that Apple people used with their iPods. I was vaguely aware of it. By "Apple people" I mean skinny, chic young women who wore jeans and owned iPods. Good-looking Apple people. Young, well-off Apple people. Healthy, good-looking Apple people. People who were outside my league.

And like so many things in life I didn't get to experience Firewire until it no longer had any meaning. Apple stopped including it on their computers circa 2012. I didn't become an Apple person until several years after that. And so I sit here surrounded by Firewire peripherals, using them, and it's just meaningless and I don't feel anything any more. Curse you, Firewire. You demon. You wound my heart with a monotonous langour. No other digital interface hurts me this way.

jordan it may even be trying to boot or find a power source from that usb c port, i had a similar issue with a hub i got

changing boot order seemed to sort it

laptop touchpad just stopped working. booted into windows and it was the same there. looking to take laptop apart but it's under the motherboard so it would be a chore.

googled. turns out f7 turns off the touchpad on this model (acer). and the option persists. so sometime in the past month i've pressed f7, turned off the touchpad, and didn't realise. IN MY DAY the function keys were for me, they didn't have anything assigned to them

anyway, working now.

I’ve been having some Dropbox and Backblaze issues. It seems that Backblaze may have quietly stopped backing up cloud based files such as Dropbox and iCloud… So I may need to rethink my current document/sharing arrangements across my Mac devices - but I haven’t come across an elegant solution online as yet.