The Computer Problems thread!

[Farinata]

Farinata, I'm downloading that program right now, thanks.

Let me know if you have trouble with it!

[xHaZxMaTx]

I guess my CD writer doesn't have 'session-at-once' capabilities.   I found another program called CloneCD that will burn gapless CDs, I've already done it, but it's only a 21 day trial.

[thegayhare]

Hmmm Does anyone know of a good free dvd ripper?  Something that'll convert drom a dvd to a format windows can read Avi or Mpeg

[Farinata]

Hmmm Does anyone know of a good free dvd ripper?  Something that'll convert drom a dvd to a format windows can read Avi or Mpeg

If you are running Windows, this is a non-trivial problem (though it can certainly be done). I'm not aware of any free program that will do it all for you in one step (though I have been out of it for a while so somebody may be able to help you here). DVD Decrypter is the "canonical" free decrypting program, but it's just going to give you the basic files; you have to convert them into a readable format. I would suggest you look up "DVD Ripping" on Google and follow one of the many guides. They all take multiple steps and use several different pieces of free software. If you were running Linux....

Let me know if you get stuck, I may be able to help.

Edit: As an example, here is a guide using free programs (which I have not used).
http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/Guides:Basic_Guide/Setup
This is not an atypical level of complexity.

[Destina Faroda]

Okay, another stupid question from me.

I recorded an MPEG file, but while recording the program screwed up (Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4 SE) and as a result, I have what I believe is a corrupt MPEG file

Now I can play it in Winamp an Windows Media Player fine, even though the clip is listed as only one second long. (It plays longer.)  But copying and pasting this file into any editing program causes it to only recognize the first three seconds at best, or at worst causing the programs to freeze.  Is there anything that can be done for this file, or is it a lost cause?

[Madd the Sane]

try using some sort of screen capture software.  That might help.

[mini-lion]

Destina Faroda, could you burn the file to disc from inside window media player to see if its not just a cahed file that its playing, then copying it back onto your system with a different file name?

then you will see if you actually have the file still

[thegayhare]

Sorry to bump this but once again the bunny needs some help

Well Two problems have cropped up

One I've been told by my freinds on Aim that no they arn't ignoring me It's just that  on there End It looks like my Aim is rappidly logging out and back in.  I never see anything

I think that the problem might be with the connection to the new wireless router and the modem.  since my laptop is also seeing the same troubles when using Aim.

I think it might also have something to do with the fact that I went from using USB to connect to the modem to using an ethernet.  how ever the connection display says I've got a great connection

I think the same problem might also be the cause for my web lage, download lag and why my bit torrent is dragging ass.

Any Ideas or suggestions?

Question Two

My sis got me a new Dvd rom for my laptop so now my computer can actualy see DVD's in the drive.  However I'm getting a new error when I try to watch movies.

It tells me that the DVD copy protectino is fighting with my video card and that I should try and download a new driver for it

How ever there doesn't seem to be a updated driver for me anywhere

the video card is an Ati Rage Mobility

So any sugestions?  any one know where I can find a Rage mobility driver for xp?

[Aridas]

One thing... USB is the WORSE of the two... Not sure what to do about your problem but for god's sake, if it's your ISP, tell them to grow some reliability.

[Madd the Sane]

If at all possible, use Ethernet.  It's faster and more supported for networking. 

As for the video card, look for drivers at ATi's website, http://www.ati.com  . Or just go here: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html  and click on the legacy part.  It could also be possible that you will need a DVD decoder card.

[Brunhidden]

i have more of an internet problem then a hardware or software problem (well, my box is over ten years old, i cant afford anything, and my wife denies me the administrative privalages to install or delete anything....i cant even download programs- so i wont be haveing anything to ask about THAT) and ive completely exausted my pathetically limited ammount of computer savvy.

you see i used to have a bit of a forum empire going on, and that kinda fell and now i only have this forum and one other i appear in. one of the first places i went to in order to facilitate the rise of my empire was a nice looking forum that has some spambot filters.

apperantly the forum itself dosent like me- durring regestration it says to fill out the required fields and suggests leaving the personal info blank otherwise it will think im a spambot. i comply, it knows nothing other then my username, password, and email adress. at the end of the regestration it has four radial buttons, two of which say "yes im a human" and the other two that say "no, im a spambot". i can only select one of the four, but i think as long as its either of the yesses itll be okay.

after i do all the normal regestration stuff it says "Invalid Session. Please resubmit the form." and deletes what i put down for a password. okay, im confused. it does not anywhere state criteria for passwords such as length or if it needs numbers. i try again, with a longer password containing numbers. de-ja-vu. i try again, making sure to include both upper and lower case numbers. nada. i try a diffrent username under the vauge notion they may have heard of me and pre-emptively blocked me. again nothing. i try all of the above steps using the OTHER radial button that says yes. a whole lotta nothing.

what on earth could it be haveing a problem with?

When in worry, when in doubt. Run in circles, scream and shout!

[Aridas]

It's a bad idea for me to answer, but I think it has more to do with the forum acting up than anything. It could be other things, but I doubt  it's the filter.

[Vidar]

i have more of an internet problem then a hardware or software problem (well, my box is over ten years old, i cant afford anything, and my wife denies me the administrative privalages to install or delete anything....i cant even download programs- so i wont be haveing anything to ask about THAT) and ive completely exausted my pathetically limited ammount of computer savvy.

you see i used to have a bit of a forum empire going on, and that kinda fell and now i only have this forum and one other i appear in. one of the first places i went to in order to facilitate the rise of my empire was a nice looking forum that has some spambot filters.

apperantly the forum itself dosent like me- durring regestration it says to fill out the required fields and suggests leaving the personal info blank otherwise it will think im a spambot. i comply, it knows nothing other then my username, password, and email adress. at the end of the regestration it has four radial buttons, two of which say "yes im a human" and the other two that say "no, im a spambot". i can only select one of the four, but i think as long as its either of the yesses itll be okay.

after i do all the normal regestration stuff it says "Invalid Session. Please resubmit the form." and deletes what i put down for a password. okay, im confused. it does not anywhere state criteria for passwords such as length or if it needs numbers. i try again, with a longer password containing numbers. de-ja-vu. i try again, making sure to include both upper and lower case numbers. nada. i try a diffrent username under the vauge notion they may have heard of me and pre-emptively blocked me. again nothing. i try all of the above steps using the OTHER radial button that says yes. a whole lotta nothing.

what on earth could it be haveing a problem with?

When in worry, when in doubt. Run in circles, scream and shout!

Do you have cookies turned on? Check your browser's help for details.

[Sid]

Well, since the thread's on page one, here's my problem:

The basic scenario:
I've got a Wii, I've got DSL, but nothing in my house has WLAN. The Wii LAN adapter comes out in more than a month, so that's not an option.

What I did:
I did some snooping around and eventually found a place that lists a WLAN USB stick that can also be set up as an Access Point and works with the Wii, so I went ahead and bought it. The good news is that it's compatible to my PC (Windows 2000) and my Mac Mini (10.3.9), and I installed the newest drivers (from the chipset site, which are more recent than the ones from the product site). The stick is recognized on both systems, and the installation happened without an error.

What I want to do:
My plan is (and this is supposed to work, according to the site) to share my existing Internet connection with the stick, so that the stick can act as an Access Point for the Wii.

What my problem is:
Both the PC and the Mac are hooked up to the Internet through a regular Router (which in turn is hooked up to the DSL Modem).

The Mac can share the Internet with the stick, but the stick's software doesn't offer the SoftAP option - I assume that only the Windows version offers it.

The PC has issues with the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). When I want to share the connection, it tells me that it wants to assign the IP 192.168.0.1 to my LAN adapter. By default, that's the IP of the Router, but I set that to 192.168.0.10 to avoid conflicts. I also told the Router's DHCP setup to assign the .0.1 IP to the PC.
When I then tried to activate ICS, I got the error message:

An error occured while Internet Connection Sharing was being enabled.

Internet Connection Sharing cannot be enabled.
A LAN connection is already configured with the IP address
that is required for automatic IP addressing.

This error message has been haunting me. The LAN adapter already has the IP it is supposed to get, so what's this all about? I then went through a series of tests, but nothing seemed to work:
- Deactivate DHCP in the router, assign IP and Gateway manually
- Give the LAN adapter the IP .0.2 so that the .0.1 IP is not in use in the entire LAN
- Set things to 192.168.1.x so that the .0.1 IP is definitely free

The funny thing is that I can EASILY activate ICS the other way around (enabling sharing in the settings of the USB stick, even though it's not connected to the net), but I suppose that this is NOT the way it's supposed to work.

The additional problem is that the Windows software doesn't give me the "Enable SoftAP" menu item, either. But I assume/hope that it will pop up once I shared the connection.

If anybody has good voodoo tips, please help me out?

[Reese Tora]

what's the softAP option supposed to do, exactly?

I believe your problem is that you are trying to place the same network on either side of what is essentially a router(your computer)

now, without using the softAP software, windows does allow you to set up any wireless device as a member of an ad-hoc network.  This should be sufficient to allow your Wii to conenct to your wireless network.

Open Network conenctions, and right click on your wireless connection, choose properties.
Select the Wireless Networks tab, and click the add button.
fill in the blanks as appropriate(network name, encryption, if any)
make sure the check box at the very bottom "this is a computer to computer(ad-hoc) network"
now OK out

Now, to get your wireless network connected to your wired network.
I assume that your LAN connection that's conencted to the internet is already functioning.

Click on one of your connections, hold down control and click on the other connection.
right click on either, and choose 'bridge connections'.

Sit back, and wait for the network bridge icon to appear.

your PC should now be acting as a network bridge between two segments of your LAN (the segment connecting your PC to your router, and the wireless 'segment')

make sure to assign an IP address to each interface, and you should be good to go

[thegayhare]

If at all possible, use Ethernet.  It's faster and more supported for networking. 

As for the video card, look for drivers at ATi's website, http://www.ati.com  . Or just go here: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html  and click on the legacy part.  It could also be possible that you will need a DVD decoder card.

For all this talk of ether net being faster or better for networking I'm not seeing it...   my computer is connecting slower then when I had dial up half the time, hell it can lag for five minutes loading a thread with no images.  I'm constantly getting  errors "connection reset by peer".  My protection programs can no longer connect to the internet to download there updates (well 1 in about 20 tries works), there is the constant Aim spasms as well as other problems

I've been to Ati's site thats the first thing I did and there xp legacy section doesn't have drivers for rage mobility I downloaded what was there and 1 refused to install, one did nothing ansd the other sent the lap to into fits of reboots and spasms

[Sid]

what's the softAP option supposed to do, exactly?

SoftAP would just be an Access Point, set up via software (and the USB stick, of course).

Click on one of your connections, hold down control and click on the other connection.
right click on either, and choose 'bridge connections'.

Sit back, and wait for the network bridge icon to appear.

I believe that Network Bridging is a new feature in WinXP. So I'm kinda back on square one, I think. But I'll try it anyway... *tries* Well, if it works (Windows Help doesn't seem to know it, though), it doesn't work the way you described.

And I'm not really placing the same network on the either end of my "router".
DSL-Router --(LAN)--> PC --(ICS)--> USB-Stick --(WLAN)--> Wii
It's the ICS part that's preventing me from checking out the next step, I think.

While fiddling with the Ad-Hoc settings (even though I don't have such a fancy tab - but the program lets me do that at least), I occasionally found the stick with the Wii (even though I didn't seem to find it all the time, so I'll have to re-try the settings once ICS is up and running), at least.

[Reese Tora]

what's the softAP option supposed to do, exactly?

SoftAP would just be an Access Point, set up via software (and the USB stick, of course).

Click on one of your connections, hold down control and click on the other connection.
right click on either, and choose 'bridge connections'.

Sit back, and wait for the network bridge icon to appear.

I believe that Network Bridging is a new feature in WinXP. So I'm kinda back on square one, I think. But I'll try it anyway... *tries* Well, if it works (Windows Help doesn't seem to know it, though), it doesn't work the way you described.

And I'm not really placing the same network on the either end of my "router".
DSL-Router --(LAN)--> PC --(ICS)--> USB-Stick --(WLAN)--> Wii
It's the ICS part that's preventing me from checking out the next step, I think.

While fiddling with the Ad-Hoc settings (even though I don't have such a fancy tab - but the program lets me do that at least), I occasionally found the stick with the Wii (even though I didn't seem to find it all the time, so I'll have to re-try the settings once ICS is up and running), at least.

ICS sets up your PC as a router using NAT.  It funcions in the same essential way as your router does(with less features, and less efficiently, but functionally the same). I figured that the computer was getting itself confused because you would have the 192.168.0.x network on both connections where windows expects to see different networks.  My other suggesting would have been to setting up one side of ICS as 192.168.1.x or something similar.

--edit--

for spelling, grammer, also:

sorry about the confusion with commands, I missed that your system is running w2k

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I suspect ICS is sufficiently silly that it's not going to let you use anything but 192.168.0.x

And, as Reese says, you've got multiple network cards assigned the same IP address range, which is going to confuse your poor windows machine. More than it already is, I mean.

The problem is this: IP addresses are not assigned to machines, they are assigned to network interfaces. So, if you have a machine with half a dozen network cards in it, you need half a dozen different IP addresses. If they're all on different networks, then you need half a dozen different networks, with IP addresses that match (trust me, I've done this many times :-)

There are exceptions to this rule, but they involve some rather more complex network mojo, so you can ignore them for the moment.


In summation:

You have the following networks:


(net A) -- Router
             |
           (net B) -- PC -- (net C) -- Wii


Now, Net A is the internet - listed here simply for clarity.
Net B is your internal, wired network - presently tagged as 192.168.0.x, presumably /24 - ie, netmask of 255.255.255.0
Net C is the WLAN network you want to set up.

Now, what you've said you've done is tell Router (192.168.0.1) to assign -that- IP to PC, on the network card, and assumed that that's the same IP that PC will assign to the USB stick.

The problem is, you're missing the detail that ICS won't work on an interface that has DHCP on it. So there's some problems there already.

Probably your easiest way around this is to set the USB stick to 192.168.0.1, and change Net B to, say, 192.168.1.x/24 - once you've done that, you should be home and hosed. Well, after you pick all the kit that's talking on that network and update the IP addresses...

In that situation, Router is assigning IP addresses on the wired network, and PC is assigning IP addresses on the wireless network.

Make sense?

[Vidar]

If at all possible, use Ethernet.  It's faster and more supported for networking. 

As for the video card, look for drivers at ATi's website, http://www.ati.com  . Or just go here: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html  and click on the legacy part.  It could also be possible that you will need a DVD decoder card.

I've been to Ati's site thats the first thing I did and there xp legacy section doesn't have drivers for rage mobility I downloaded what was there and 1 refused to install, one did nothing ansd the other sent the lap to into fits of reboots and spasms

What brand is your comp? Maybe you can download drivers from the manufacturer's website. Otherwise, try the Rage PRO drivers from ATI's website.

[Sid]

Probably your easiest way around this is to set the USB stick to 192.168.0.1, and change Net B to, say, 192.168.1.x/24 - once you've done that, you should be home and hosed. Well, after you pick all the kit that's talking on that network and update the IP addresses...

In that situation, Router is assigning IP addresses on the wired network, and PC is assigning IP addresses on the wireless network.

I've tried disabling DHCP before, and it didn't really help (however, it does help a bit because the lack of DHCP lets me switch IPs directly in Windows). Tried the tip I quoted, but I now get this error:

Internet Connection Sharing cannot be enabled. The LAN connection selected as the private network is either not present, or is disconnected from the network. Please ensure that the LAN adapter is connected before enabling Internet Connection Sharing

A quick Google for this message tells me to set the adapter that will do the sharing to .0.1, but I already did that with the stick... O_o;;;
I begin to suspect that the problem is deeper than I assumed... unless you have another good idea ^^;

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You're selecting the network card (as distinct from the USB stick) to do ICS on.

.. someone with windows might be better able to help, methinks....

[Reese Tora]

supposing your network is set up like this:



which places can you set the IP address, and which places are you stuck with a specific one? (and, uh... don't tell me what 'a' is, but can you tell me what the specific addresses are for the ones you can't change?)

--edit--

OK, go ahead... each letter should have an IP address associated with it, a is your IP address from your ISP, 'b' and 'c' are the IP addresses on your wired network, and 'd' and 'e' are the addresses on your wireless network, and they should all be different

[Sid]

I think I can set all IPs except for (a). The Router (b) and the network card (c) should have the same x in 192.168.x.y (if I see this correctly), but that's pretty much the only restriction I'm facing.

[Reese Tora]

right, and the x  for d and e should be a different number from the x for b and c

so if x for b and c is 0, x for d and e should be any single number other than 0 (from 0 to 255, of course)

[Sid]

Nope to both cases (either x being 0).
When I (try to) enable ICS on the network card, the stick gets 192.168.0.1 automatically anyway. So I'd have to set the network card to a non-zero x, leading to the error I quoted five posts above.

I think I'll just go with the flow and eventually try another approach to this whole WLAN issue, unless some miracle happens.

Thanks to both of you, though! Your suggestions and explanations were a great help at understanding the underlying issue

...or I'll try it with the computer downstairs, even though I doubt that I'll manage to get a good signal up here, if it works... *ponders*

[xHaZxMaTx]

My CD Drives (AOpen DVDR/CDRW + Lite-On CDRW) seems to have trouble reading CD's.  If the computer is booted up with nothing in the drives, then will show as empty in My Computer, and will read the first disc you put in, but if you replace the discs, it doesn't read the new one, and still says the old disc is still in the drive.

[superluser]

My CD Drives (AOpen DVDR/CDRW + Lite-On CDRW) seems to have trouble reading CD's.  If the computer is booted up with nothing in the drives, then will show as empty in My Computer, and will read the first disc you put in, but if you replace the discs, it doesn't read the new one, and still says the old disc is still in the drive.

What models, and what OS?  Very specifically, what's the interface for the drives? (EIDE, Firewire, SCSI)

This actually sounds like a firmware/software type problem, but it might help to know the drive models.  (actually, if it be a firmware problem, you'll need the models to get new firmware anyway.)

[xHaZxMaTx]

IDE AOpen COM5232/AAH Pro
IDE Lite-On LTR-16102B

Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 w/ Vista Visual Theme

I assume that's the information you're looking for.

[superluser]

IDE AOpen COM5232/AAH Pro

There was a firmware upgrade for this on 5/19/2005:

http://download.aopen.com.tw/userdownload_List.aspx?RecNo=9656&Model=COM5232/AAH%20PRO
(Hope that link works)

This might not fix your problem, but you should probably upgrade anyways (if you haven't already).  Beyond that, I'm stumped.