The Computer Problems thread!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

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.

Mmhmm. What I was saying was that b & c need to be changed from 192.168.0.x to 192.168.1.x, so that you can have 192.168.0.x on the WLAN, on d & e. Reason for this is ICS -requires- you to use .0.x, because it's pants.... :-)

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

No problem.

[Sid]

Quick update:
In a horrible twist of irony, setting up ICS for the stick under Windows ME was no problem AT ALL, but the software still doesn't allow me to set it as an Access Point, so I'm kinda left with seeking another WLAN solution.

Ah well, no big loss, and thanks again for the quick help, guys

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Is there a place where you can set the settings for the stick?

If so, look for "Ad-Hoc" or "master" (or something like that) since, depending on the card, you sometimes have to set it as master, and sometimes as an ad-hoc network in order to get it working...

[Sid]

Tried both (there is no actual "Master" setting, but the alternative to "ad hoc" is "hierarchy", so I tested that one), but no dice.

[xHaZxMaTx]

I think I may have royally screwed something up.

I have two hard drives in my computer, a 160GB and a 80GB, both Western Digital, both IDE.  I was trying to reformat one of the two partitions on the 80GB hard drive, but I somehow ended up with three partitions on a single hard drive.  But they all worked, so I didn't really tyhink anything of it.  My primary hard drive is the 160GB, and when I tried booting from it after reformatting the 80GB, I got this message:
"NTLDR is missing...
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart"

I then booted from one of the partitions on the 80GB hard drive and went to 'My Computer' to see if the 160GB was visible, which it wasn't.  I thought it may have been something to do with the 80GB hard drive, so I took that out, set the jumpers on the 160GB to 'Single' and tried booting from it again, but I still got the same message.

[Vidar]

Sounds like you may have deleted the primare partition on your 160 GB disk.

Boot from your 80 GB disk, and go to
Start-> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management
and see if your missing disk shows up there. My Computer only shows formatted partitions, and not unformatted disk space.

How did you try to reformat the offending partition?

[superluser]

Murphy's Law problem here:

Late last year, I upgraded my computer, but it wasn't until now that I had the opportunity to try to use my new USB 2.0 ports.  So I plugged a flash drive into it, and it didn't show up.  I poked around a bit, but nothing.  I tried plugging my scanner into the ports, and now it won't recognize the scanner.

Those of you who are quick on the uptake are probably cringing in horror right now.

When I looked at the connection on the motherboard, I discovered that I plugged the thing in the wrong way round.  Instead of a 9-pin plug with one pin blocked out, there were two one-line connectors, and they had been tied together in such a way that it looked like the proper way to connect them was the wrong way.  So pin 7 connected to slot 1, pin 2 connected to slot 10, and so on.  As Murphy said, ``If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.''

My question is this: do I now have some very expensive paperweights, or can this sort of damage generally be repaired?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

If you've powered everything off, unplugged it, plugged it back in correctly, and it's still not working, then you're probably the proud owner of a set of very pretty, obscure paperweights. :-/

Usually, though, they're robust enough to ignore wrong signals. Particularly at USB strength - no more than 500mA, or so I'm told. If your scanner is powered separately, it should be fine.

With luck, anyway...

[xHaZxMaTx]

Vidar, I believe that may be exactly what I've done.  As for how it happened, I feel pretty stupid about it now.  I should have unplugged the 160GB before attempting to do anything.  That 'third partition' was actually the only partition on the 160GB.

Which leads me to my next question - I heard information isn't deleted from your hard drive until it's written over, so is there a way to retrieve all, if not most of the information before I reformatted without spending an ass-load of money?

[superluser]

Which leads me to my next question - I heard information isn't deleted from your hard drive until it's written over, so is there a way to retrieve all, if not most of the information before I reformatted without spending an ass-load of money?

Not when you reformat it.

I actually have a similar problem.  A few years back, I was upgrading Red Hat Linux, but Anaconda was broken for the upgrade option.  Fine, I said.  I've got a nice large spare drive.  I'll just tell it to perform a standard install and I'll leave the home partition on the other drive...it started to install over the non-empty drive.  I got to it right after it started, so it's only written over the superblock.

Yeah, only.  The data're still there, it's just that I have no way to find them, short of grep "foo" /dev/hda .

If you've reformatted, it's gone, short of forensics.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Well, my day is just full of fail.

[Reese Tora]

That depends on HOW you reformated it.

A quick format only destroys the file table, leaving the majority of the data intact, if inaccessable.  Powerful programs (and costly data recovery companies, but this won't be cheap either way.) can easily retrieve anything that hasn't yet been overwritten.  Parts of your data may still ahve ben destroyed depending no how much activity your disk has seen since it was formatted.

A full format goes over every bit and checks if they are unusable, which destroys any data in the process. In this case, you're out of luck.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Yeah, full reformat.

[Aridas]

Then why do apps exist that can recover data from a full format?

[Madd the Sane]

Because most of the time it only overwrites the File Allocation Table(FAT), telling the OS that there's nothing there.  Same thing when you delete something.  The OS writes to the FAT that the file is no longer there, making it so that you can overwrite anything there. Technically you can retrieve anything that's been deleted, but nothing that's been overwritten.

[xHaZxMaTx]

And all the files have been written over in a full format?

[superluser]

And all the files have been written over in a full format?

Well, it was probably a Microsoft program, right?  I'll give you even odds that the difference between a Microsoft quick format and full format is that one begins with a Q.

I can tell you how to check to make sure that you haven't done a full format if you're panicking.  Try and remember a text string that you would have had on your drive.  Now search the raw text of the drive for that string.

...I could tell you exactly how to do that on Linux, and that may be your best bet.  Get a Linux Live CD(*) and boot from it.  Then once you get to a command prompt, type, ``cat /proc/partitions''.

Look for the one that says something like ``hda 167772160''

Then run

Code Select Expand

grep -i "whateverthestringisthatyouremember" /dev/hda

where whateverthestringisthatyouremember is the string that you remember being on your drive, and hda is the thing that you saw output above.

It will run for a while, but if you see any results other than another command prompt, you still have data on the disk.

It's probably time to go through its clothes and look for loose change, though.


(*)they're extremely easy to get--just go to any local college's CS department and ask around; you'll get one for free if they think that there's any chance you might use Linux.  We're so predictable.

[xHaZxMaTx]

I have no clue what you're talking about, but I can tell you that there are two ways to format a hard drive using the Windows XP disc - quick and normal.  I know for a fact that I didn't use quick.

[Aridas]

Well, the full format does a few more things, like checking for errors and such.. probably makes sure things are done the right way... but I'm not sure if it kills the data too.

You could give this a shot to see what happens when you take a scan: http://www.majorgeeks.com/R-Studio_d1031.html

[Azlan]

Hey techies, here is a question:

PC receives continuous power to all fans, moving parts and "lighted" parts (power LED, fancy blue lights on video card) but is functionally dead.  No POST.  Power must be unplugged or killed via switch, all moving parts spin back up if power is restored and cannot be shut off or reset to initiate boot.

[Aridas]

I've actually had that problem before... with an old pentium pro computer... no video, I don't think there were any beeps either... can't say I know what caused it, but I at least know the problem...

[Reese Tora]

Hey techies, here is a question:

PC receives continuous power to all fans, moving parts and "lighted" parts (power LED, fancy blue lights on video card) but is functionally dead.  No POST.  Power must be unplugged or killed via switch, all moving parts spin back up if power is restored and cannot be shut off or reset to initiate boot.

At first glance, it sounds like a problem with the motherboard(a short curcuit).  My second thoughts say it might be the case switch being stuck.  A third thought tells me it might be a fault in the power supply.

I'd test it by removing the leads to the power and reset pins on the board, and connecting them manually (with a key or screwdriver) to see if the switch really is the problem. 

The next easiest thing to try is replace the powersupply.  Most components that spin up or glow are connected directly to the power supply, and it there's a fault that prevents it from turning off the flow to those components, this could be what your problem is.  a quick (and relatively cheap) thing you can do to check this is replace the power supply and see if this clears it up.

IF it turns out to be the motherboard, then it'll have to be replaced, as there's no cheap way to pinpoint what component is the problem or to repair or replace a damaged component. (and no way at all to repair it if there's an actual short circuit between traces in the substrates of the board)
now, it's possible that there's something that's fallen between components and created a short, which can be removed, but it's damage may already have been done at this point... you could check and see if there's anything metalic on the board that shouldn't be there, but I think anything that might have done that would have been loose and free to fall to the bottom of the case, where you might not notice it.

[Aridas]

The problem I see with that solution is that things that are plugged into the motherboard are still recieving power and functioning normally... well, as normally as those things work, anyway. if there was a short, wouldn't that make everything not work?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Not necessarily. It depends entirely on what shorted out, and where.

Shorting out a main power flow, yeah. Shorting out something like a reset switch, though, no - all that will do is stop the switch from doing anything, since the circuitry depends on the -change- in power across the switch - it's an instant switch, usually, not a flick-on-and-off type thing.

And there's lots of -other- places that behave much the same, and can be shorted out much the same, with unpredictable results.

[Reese Tora]

It depends on what shorts.  Recently, I had a motherboard short (becasue of a bad power supply failing, don't get me started) where the board would boot immediately when the power supply(a new one) was turned on, and ONLY when the power supply was turned on.

Most of the time, a short in the board should lead to one integrated function(like a port) failing, massive errors, or complerte non-functionality, but occasionally you get something wierd out of randon chance

That's why I say check the powersupply and switch first, they're cheaper, and easier to diagnose (and replace... though the switch might require the entire case to be replaced, depending on your model)

There's really nothing else that should cause such a wierd effect without atleast generating a few beep codes

[Vidar]

If you are tech-savvy, you could remove everything unnessecary from your computer (sound card, network card, keyboard, mouse, usb-devices), and then try to boot up, to see if you get post. If you don't, one of the remaining systems (main board, cpu, video card, memory, power supply) is knackered. If you do get post, chances are, it's one of the disconnected components.
If you have never rummaged around in the insides of your computer, get an expert opinion from a trusted and competent computer-geek.

[Sid]

I had that problem (or at least one that sounds the same) when I bought a new motherboard. Turned out I didn't connect that second power cable (the tiny square one) to the motherboard, thus resulting in a situation where everything started to move like normal, but the computer didn't start booting.

[Azlan]

Thanks, the problem is on my old machine, now Neni's box.  I won't be able to open the case and start poking around in it until the weekend, too busy trying to cope with the DoD's newest iteration of the smartcard.  Have to replace firmware and middleware across the entire enterprise.  Thank you Government Directed Actions. 

[Tapewolf]

My MS optical Intellimouse has recently taken to doing some kind of sample-and-hold thing.  For instance, if you move the mouse upwards, the pointer will often carry on in that direction after the mouse itself has stopped.

Could this be some kind of driver issue or is the image recognition engine inside it failing somehow?

[Reese Tora]

if it's a recent thing, and you didn't make any software changes, it should be a hardware problem.

Try cleaning the bottom parts of the mouse, it could just be dirty.
(this kitty still uses a ball mouse, how old fashioned... his last optical mouse didn't last a year)