new boring computer questions

also:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/php_iis.html

http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/cocoabooklet/

have been designing cd sleeves for a friend. simple images with text overlaid. but i'm not sure of the final text and figured i'd do it in a way that he'd be able to modify the text himself. so, html. a table containing two cells, with the front and back images as backgrounds to these cells, text goes over the top. looks fine on screen, text aligned nicely and easy enough for lay-person to edit without having to worry about photoshop layers and having the same fonts etc. images are 710x710px each, 120mm square @ 150dpi. (oops, the fold's on the wrong side, nevermind)

unfortunately, when i come to print these i don't have any control over the dpi of the output and it just scales them to fit the page, makes them about 20% too big.

any suggestions?

example here btw
www.koogy.clara.co.uk/cd_cover.html

does your friend have illustrator, or acrobat?

even if he has illustrator or acrobat i don't 8) i don't think he's technical at all. have done all my others just using gimp (usually they don't have any text anyway) but i know the text isn't final and wanted him to be able to change it himself.

i thought css was designed to handle more than just web layout. can find the odd thing about @page but not enough (seems to let you specify borders and margins, not absolute size. could be wrong. why doesn't google let you search for @page without removing the @?)

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.

Remote Desktop doesn't just mirror what's on your work screen, it actually gives you whatever resolution you want. So if you have a larger monitor at home, you'll get more screen real estate. I have no experience using multiple monitors on the client side remotely, though.

Oh yeah, actually I have an HDMI out on my laptop and I already run it to my TV to watch movies, but it didn't occur to me that I could change the settings so the TV would be a double-wide monitor instead of a bigger version of my laptop screen. But apparently there's a windows 7 setting that lets you do that, says the internet

yeah, just turn off mirroring or w/e

How do I get this stupid appbario12 toolbar out of my system (Windows 7 Home Premium)? Uninstall is not working. I think it may be the root of other problems I've been having the past couple of days.

idk but if you google "appbario12" all the results are removal instructions

Tried three or four, no help. I think one of them was even a trap for more mischief.

have you tried running combofix?

Ugh I got some stupid MyPCBackup thing on my system that only finally disappeared when I uninstalled Chrome! Every other suggestion I could find didn't work. Also manually deleted the files it put in the program files directory. It went away, but I've been meaning to log on to that laptop again and check registry entries and all that. I run Spybot S&D and Malwarebytes anti-malware usually, but this laptop also has a Norton account.

Maybe I should try that--uninstall Firefox. Combofix seemed to clean up some stuff, but appbario's still there, and I still can't get my mp3 cover art back.

Appbario messed with your iTunes cover art, or something else? Either way: new low for viruses/hijackers when it comes to music fans. I'd never heard of that!

I don't know what caused it--it all started when I stupidly/idly accepted a download for something called "Codec Performers." Much weirdness after that, including mp3 files that all carry that ugly, generic musical note icon, instead of the cover art I wasted hours and hours chasing down. I feel stupid for caring. (It's not iTunes, just stuff I keep on the hard drive/Media Player.)

Un/reinstalled Firefox, but that didn't do anything. I think I'll just live with it until I buy something new in a year or two.

About a year ago, I don't know why, things I typed into the address bar on Firefox no long defaulted to a Google Search page--Yahoo became the default page. Is there a way to switch this back to Google? I hate the Yahoo search pages.

go to Menu (3 horizontal lines thingy in the upper right corner), click Options, then choose 'Search' from column on left

Thanks--worked.

Any thoughts on this, if I swapped in more memory?

Basically its for office work, music and the internet.

https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-diploma-i3-10100-slimline-office-pc.html#product-details-tab-customise

Any thoughts on this, if I swapped in more memory?

Basically its for office work, music and the internet.

https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-diploma-i3-10100-slimline-office-pc.html#product-details-tab-customise🕸

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rge17TciHfU

Would you really see much impact in throwing more than the existing 16gb into that?

Ive not been looking for a while tbh

See, this is why I have to ask basic questions on here. The person at the shop said ...

"If the default storage of 500GB is a little small for your needs, that can be customised (via the link provided) to either upgrade the 500GB Seagate BarraCuda Q5 M.2 PCIe Solid State Drive to something larger, or additional storage can be added too."

(Thanks for the answers, btw).

When you say music are you talking about creating or what, exactly

Storage wise for office work and internet you arent going to fill 500gb and its def quick enough

I dont know enough about the i3 to know what would be the likeliest limiter as it is configured there between processor (128GB maximum memory suggests not tbh), storage and RAM but id guess its the RAM so if you think youll be maxing that out in your usage then another 16GB might be no harm to throw in

Thats really up to you and whether you want to spend that now, could always retain the option to do it later at negligible extra cost or effort too

Storing music rather than creating.

500GB might not go far in that case (depends on volume and quality, obv), but external 4tb drives are cheap (and you'd want a backup anyway)

(which several people have said now!)

I've been using the same desktop pc to make music since 2011 (fully offline, which I think really extended its lifespan), but it's starting to show its age (windows 7, 8gb Ram, processor is Intel i5 2.80 Ghz, whatever that means, etc).

Do I:

1) Upgrade this same computer? Get new more Ram, swap out some other stuff? I would have the local place that looks like the Lone Gunmen's hangout do this.

2) Better to just get a new machine?If so, where do people do this these days? Do I still just go on New Egg like I did over a decade ago? I could also talk to that local place about building something.

Gonna jump like 7 versions of DAW software too, lol.

How about this? Would I need/want more than 16gb Ram if all I care about is running my DAW (smoothly)?

https://www.costco.com/dell-inspiron-desktop---13th-gen-intel-core-i5-13400---windows-11.product.4000139132.html

Just saw this

https://www.howtogeek.com/887938/inexpensive-ways-to-breathe-new-life-into-an-old-pc/

....just be careful that your new daw most likely won't be able to open any of your old projects...

adding more RAM and adding an SSD are the two easiest ways to improve your old computer's performance.

if you decide to get a new machine, building a PC is easy and fun. i'd recommend doing that. newegg is kinda scammy nowadays, kinda like amazon where you need to make sure the part is shipped and sold by newegg. check out pcpartpicker. if you have a microcenter near you, check it out, i like them a lot.

What kind of DAW is it? A lot of people steadfastly maintain old computers/OS just because they can't abide the new version of whatever (usually adobe software). If you don't want to open up your machine, apparently you can plug in an external SSD for more swap/storage. Also, laptops have gotten bizarrely cheap relative to standalone PCs, if making music on the go is a plus.

Cubase, lol. Hopefully I'll like the newest version but it seems pretty similar, which is a pro and a con for different people.

Thanks for the tip re: new egg, I'll check out pc part picker. After doing some more research I'm pretty set on building something.

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