The Computer Problems thread!

[Kitsune Ascendant]

excellent, now I won't get lost in terminals >> Thank you Tape

Off topic: The workspaces are handy when I have windows this big >>

Okay, well, the thing is, its not giving me the option to switch to anything other than 640x480. There is a section for SCreen Resolution under system -> preferences, and thats the only available option. I've tried changing themes to see if that would open up more, hasn't worked yet.
though, here is my card anyways: GeForce4 MX
It would be a better one if this premade eMachine didn't fail and have backwards pci slots >>

alright. here's the fix (as well as I can remember): go to the synaptic package manager (system->administration from the bar at the top) and do a search for geforce. it should turn up a package with some nvidia drivers, including one for the geforce series. there's also a terminal command to run. besure to write it down, as you may have to do the disable version if it screws stuff up. after that... with livecd, I don't know exactly what you'd have to do. probably stop gnome (the graphical interface a lot of different linux versions use) without atually rebooting. I don't know how to do that, so I'll leave that to someone who does know. hope this helps.

[Tapewolf]

after that... with livecd, I don't know exactly what you'd have to do. probably stop gnome (the graphical interface a lot of different linux versions use) without actually rebooting. I don't know how to do that, so I'll leave that to someone who does know. hope this helps.

CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

.. or you can skip over into console, log in as root, and run "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and then start....

assuming you're running gnome, of course. if you're running KDE, it's kdm...

live cd's are all interesting, however, since if you update drivers, you may have to reboot, and any changes you've made since you last booted won't be saved, since you booted from cd....

I'm sure pretty much everyone here can see the logical problem. :-)

I don't run live cd's, however, having enough else to do with my time, so...

[Tiger_T]

Ooh, computer problem thread. How convenient!

But actually, I'm not really having problems with my computer. I'm having problems with my moniter. The screen will randomly go black; turning it off and then back on generally fixes it, but that gets rather annoying and sometimes it will just turn black again right away. V. annoying and makes it nearly impossible to play the few computer games I have. I don't know what to do to try and fix it; generally what I do when my computer has problems is restart, but that doesn't fix anything.

Hmm, this might not be much of an advice, but I had a similar problem with my TFT-screen. Luckily it happened in warranty-time so it got fetched and repaired.
How old/What kind is your screen?

[insanekaosx]

I tried some of you're fixes and met vary states of error, then a rl friend of mine learned i had linux and we started chattting, he helped me out,and now I'm not stuck in 640x480 hell.

Thank you for tryign

I'll still turn back to you all with questions if i have them

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Local help is much to be preferred. Being able to look over your shoulder makes -so- much difference...

[insanekaosx]

actually, it was via IM, he gave me a few lines to throw in the terminal and got it ready.

HE also run Ubuntu, and has since pretty much when it was released, so he was like "Yeah, I had all the problems you'll probably have >>" Heh ^^;;

[xHaZxMaTx]

Which is better, 2x512MB DDR333 (PC2700) with Dual Channel enabled, or 2x512MB + 256MB DDR333 (PC2700) without Dual Channel enabled?  I have an AMD Athlon 64-Bit 3700+, a wireless internet PCI card, a GeForce 6600GT AGP card, two optical drives, and one hard drive.

[Vidar]

Which is better, 2x512MB DDR333 (PC2700) with Dual Channel enabled, or 2x512MB + 256MB DDR333 (PC2700) without Dual Channel enabled?  I have an AMD Athlon 64-Bit 3700+, a wireless internet PCI card, a GeForce 6600GT AGP card, two optical drives, and one hard drive.

Depends on what is more important to you. Dual channel enabled gives better performance, until you run out of memory, and windows starts using 'virtual memory' (a pagefile on your HD). Having more memory means windows will make less use of the virtual memory.
If you use applications that use a lot of memory, I would suggest that more memory == better.

I would suggest investing in 2 1GB modules for optimum performance, if you have the money.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

For my 2p, I'd say drop the 256, as it's small enough to make little difference. Hold onto it for later, however, as if you get another one to match it, you could put it in and dual-channel the pair. Assuming your motherboard has space for 4 DIMMs.

And, as Vidar pointed out, much more is generally better, if you use a lot of memory. Try checking with task manager every so often - leaving it cycling in the background on slow updates, minimize it to system tray, and check back after half an hour or an hour of using your machine as you would normally, and see what the memory usageis like. If there's a chunk of pagefile in use, generally double that, add it to your memory, and that's at least how much you're likely to use.

Bear in mind that if you add more than you use, it should use the rest as cache for things, albeit not very well. linux has a much better cache algorithm, generally speaking, though you can tune the windows somewhat, I have yet to find really useful settings for it...

[topher chee]

MY COMPUTER IS ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

640 MB Not much but better than 124

[Nikki]

MY 'PUTER CRASHED!!

ok, so i'm sitting on the comp, talking to people and playing runescape when all of a sudden my screen freezes. after about a minute of waiting, the computer shuts down.
turnining it back on, i am greeted with the message that windows cannot start up normally. 15 minutes of this, and i call down my dad. he tries for 10 minutes.

he had to re-install windows.

we lost everything.

-4000 songs
-over 50000 pictures
-400 music videos
-etcetera, etcetera.

any idea as to what caused this?

[Aridas]

you lost everything? recovery isn't even an option? did you have to format? o.o

[Nikki]

no chance of recovery, and i wasn't watching what my dad was doing because he looked like he was gonna hit me.

[Aridas]

I wonder if you can get ahold of some recovery thingie that searches all the empty space for the lost/erased files...

[Gabi]

There's hardly any chance to recover anything after Windows has been reinstalled.

MY COMPUTER IS ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

640 MB Not much but better than 124

Not much? It's a lot more than what I have (256 MB).

[Nikki]

I wonder if you can get ahold of some recovery thingie that searches all the empty space for the lost/erased files...

gosh i hope so...i cringe, thinking of all my pictures being gone

[Gabi]

Mc Afee used to have a good recovery program. And Scandisk might help find lost parts of files.

Something like that happened to me once, I never fully recovered from it.

[Vidar]

You could try freeundelete.

http://officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

[Tiger_T]

any idea as to what caused this?

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but..
    Lack of backup.


On a more sympathetic note:
I really hope you can recover some of your stuff.
Good luck.

[Aridas]

Well, anything that can search the unused space for files, or even remnants of the old formatted parts, should probably help, though you'd have to save the files on something else unless you have a program that restores said files in the spot they are... which kinda sounds dangerous to me but.. I think it exists.

[Dakata]

My laptop hates me. D:

It'll turn off every once in a while. For no friggin' reason. And when I restart it, it'll either shut off again after I click something, screw up my Firefox stuff (It'll mess with the settings) or just lag (and shut off again later).

I scanned it with Ad-Aware, and it didn't find anything. I scanned it with Avast, and it didn't find anything. And when I try to scan it with Spybot S&D it'll shut off when it's like 1/4 done.

It's an...Acer Aspire 3003WLMI (I think XP). With Windows XP.

Edit: Oh, and it'll randomly kick me off the internet too. The internet'll work for my brother's computer and my dad's computers when the internet dies on me so I doubt it's -not- the laptop's fault. D:

Edit #2: And when it shuts off, it just shuts off. It doesn't say "Windows is shutting down" or anything.

Alright, my laptop stopped doing that. Don't know why though. It could be 'cuz I unistalled some programs I never use (Can't remember what they were though.) or 'cuz I moved some stuff to my other drive (Is that what it's called?)....or both. *Shrug*

Any of you nerds think you know why it stopped dying on me?

[xHaZxMaTx]

I think your laptop may have finally gotten over your avatar.

[Dakata]

Naaaaah. I doubt it.

I've loved this durn thing for like...a year. I Haven't hit it at all. *Hugs his/her laptop* I LESS THAN THREE (<3) YOU, EVIL JR.

...*Cough*Ishouldchangemyavvie*Cough*

[Nikki]

any idea as to what caused this?

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but..
    Lack of backup.

Erm..i was referring to the crash ^^;

[Tiger_T]

I know.

[Dakata]

...

[insertotherquotethingiehere]

Alright, my laptop stopped doing that. Don't know why though. It could be 'cuz I unistalled some programs I never use (Can't remember what they were though.) or 'cuz I moved some stuff to my other drive (Is that what it's called?)....or both. *Shrug*

Any of you nerds think you know why it stopped dying on me?

*Pokes the nerdy Tiger, nerdy box, nerdy Tape-wolf and nerdy [and moogle-y] moogle*

[mini-lion]

could be that this piece of software may have been running some back ground tasks for examples some pretty harmless updates, but this will take processing power and memory space so maybe getting rid of the program freed up some back ground thinking space. As for moving stuff over to another drive think of it this way you have a book with a hundred chapters, if you rip out 50 of them and remove them from the contents page then its going to take less effort to find and organise items, in this case it would be a good idea to update the contents page where as in computing terms doing a defrag does relatively the same thing.

Just a quick note here from me, my brothers hard drive recently failed to boot due to a sudden incompatibility with the m/b which is strange since he's been using this combination for the past year, turns out after running a few tests there were two problems the indexing process for the hard drive had got a bit nasty causing it to choose whether or not to read or write and also the boot process was a bit off.  Any way boot process meant to change the BIOS and make sure it was booting from hard disk first (i normally like to try to boot from CD as it helps with windows being reformatted but now the boot sequence prefers hard disk) .  Secondly i did a bit of computer cleaning if you have windows is to go to my computer right click on your main disk drive, properties, tools and do a error check with both options checked it should ask to run on reboot say yes and reboot if not done automatically.

[Tapewolf]

Any of you nerds think you know why it stopped dying on me?
*Pokes the nerdy Tiger, nerdy box, nerdy Tape-wolf and nerdy [and moogle-y] moogle*

Nah, it's Windows.  If it breaks, you're on your own 

[xHaZxMaTx]

Stop blaming everything on Windows. (I'm happy with it, it does everything I want fine, and I never have any problems with it.)