The New Computer Problems Thread

[Aridas]

edit: er, I mean, it's not there... says the action only works for things that are installed.

[Ryudo Lee]

Do you have a restore point prior to installing OneCare?  I've been trying to look this one up, but everything I have found so far suggests that the only way to remove the restrictions is to just do a system restore.  Most everyone who's used OneCare and uninstalled it has found that the restrictions are kept in place.

[Aridas]

But the thing is, there WEREN'T any restrictions BEFORE I uninstalled it...

[Ryudo Lee]

I gathered that.  Maybe those are some default settings the uninstaller sets?  I'm not sure.  The next best thing to doing a system restore is to contact Microsoft support about it.

[Aridas]

yeah.. system restore and then goodbye everything else  I put in D:

edit: but I can't, since that doesn't seem to work for some odd reason.

[Ryudo Lee]

Backup your files, it's time to reinstall!  And as we all know, reinstalling Windows is only slightly less of a pain in the rear as calling Microsoft Support... but only ever so slightly.

Actually, now that I think about it, you should try and run a repair from Windows Setup.  See if that helps.

Another thought, have you checked your HOSTS file?

[Aridas]

I'm not going to go doing the first, the second likely won't work as I already had to do it for something else before, and the third, as far as I know, is the least involved with my closed port problem.

[Ryudo Lee]

Well I'm outta ideas.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Okay, that was, by far, the weirdest thing that has happened on my computer. Just yesterday I was putting some files on my 4 GB flash drive to give to a friend of mine, and when he plugs it into his computer it doesn't work. So I take it back yo see if it works in my computer and when I plug it into the USB port, my computer shuts down. I try pushing the power button and nothing happens. Then I take out the flash drive and my computer turns back on without pushing the power button.
So I won't be using that flash drive, anymore.

Not really a problem, just thought I'd share it with ya'll.

[Ryudo Lee]

I had a similar problem with one of my flash drives.  But instead of not working, it locked down a folder that I was using.  It was so bad, I couldn't access it, I couldn't delete it, I couldn't do anything with it.  I had to reformat the drive.  Luckily I had a good backup.  I later determined that it was being caused by me not using the Safely Remove Hardware feature.  Now I use that for everything USB, flash drive or not.

[Aridas]

Damnit... I'm going to need a program I can run from a CD or SD card so I can check and possibly fix my laptop's hard drive... anyone know of one?

[Ryudo Lee]

The Windows Repair Console.  Just boot from your Windows CD, let it go through the usual stuff before setup, and choose Repair Console.  You can run chkdsk from there.

[Aridas]

But you have to do that "choose an installation" thing from there, and the same crap happens.

[Ryudo Lee]

If the BIOS supports it, you can make a bootable USB drive: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877-6160062.html

[Vidar]

Or you can try to make a windows live-cd using BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/), and try to diagnose your problems/ rescue tour files from there.

[Aridas]

If I could even just get an OS running, I could nab important files and ship them off via SD card, then nuke the hard drive and install it again, attempting to make partitions avoiding damaged area... I'll give that a shot. I wonder if they make anything that can automatically tell me things like that so I can avoid assigning bad space to a partition...

[Reese Tora]

If I could even just get an OS running, I could nab important files and ship them off via SD card, then nuke the hard drive and install it again, attempting to make partitions avoiding damaged area... I'll give that a shot. I wonder if they make anything that can automatically tell me things like that so I can avoid assigning bad space to a partition...

Then Bart PE or linux on a bootable CD/DvD/Flash drive should see you in good hands.
(just note, make sure the flash drive is in palce before booting PE, it doesn't auto detect)

[Aridas]

i've been trying to check the drive for bad sectors and such, but phase 2 takes an excessive amount of time (progress bar never moved at all, despite HD access) and then it went up eventually... then it says it couldn't complete the disk check. I think I need a better util, but I'd need to make another cd and get another util... Before, when I ran the disk check without telling it to check for bad sectors, I think the computer restarted...

[superluser]

i've been trying to check the drive for bad sectors and such, but phase 2 takes an excessive amount of time (progress bar never moved at all, despite HD access)

What's phase two?

Anyways, I've got a question:

I'm looking for an IDE for some C programming.  I think I used Anjuta before (and liked it), but I'm looking to go non-GNOME (I moved to XFCE after GNOME started using Windows Explorer).  Any suggestions?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hmm. I tend to use gnome, but disable nautilus. To the point of chmod -x /usr/bin/nautilus, as that seems the only way of getting the damn thing to go away and stay away...

Strange how that happens, isn't it? :-/

As for IDEs, I haven't heard of any decent ones. Have you tried hunting through apt's list, or looking on freshmeat?

[superluser]

Hmm. I tend to use gnome, but disable nautilus. To the point of chmod -x /usr/bin/nautilus, as that seems the only way of getting the damn thing to go away and stay away...

Yeah.  I think when I first tried it, it used OpenGL, and I had no OpenGL hardware support, which made it both ugly and s l o w.  I decided that if GNOME developers thought that such bloat was anything other than something to be removed, it was probably not in my best interest to keep using their software.

As for IDEs, I haven't heard of any decent ones. Have you tried hunting through apt's list, or looking on freshmeat?

Yeah, but there are a lot of IDEs.  I was hoping to avoid looking through the whole list by asking here.

EDIT: HA HA DISREGARD THAT.  Turns out I didn't use Anjuta.  I used Geany.  That was the one I liked.  And it still works under XFCE.

That was just the pick-me-up I needed today.

[Aridas]

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.

This isn't good. How do I fix it?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

It's not?

[Aridas]

No, it isn't. Because it's basically the last thing I can think of that could possibly be causing bit torrent to be unconnectable, among other things.

also: Is this bad? I understand low SNR is bad and so is high attenuation, but not much else... Just how bad is it for me? (also, if there's any way possible to get this remedied, I'd like to know it, to make sure everything is alright.)

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Oh, look. It's a web-but-not-web-enough-to-be-compatible-with-anything-that-might-want-to-follow-standards file, from Microsoft, again.

Ew.

[Aridas]

Don't blame me. I attempted to keep it in one piece. I'll reupload it as something else after I make up for what'll disappear.

edit: Done. That wasn't so hard after all.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hmm. From the look of it, it's not -great-, but not enough to totally kill your connection. Besides - ECC on the transport layer should cover that. And then you have ECC on the TCP layer on top of that...

The effect should be a somewhat slowing down of the link, but not much more.

As far as "things you can do about it" - check the cables, make sure you don't have, for example, the dsl cable running next to the power, or "neatly bundled up in a tight bunch", just to select two examples. Other than that... you might talk to your ISP, and see if there's anything they can do to check it from their end, and locate if the issue is inside or outside your property.

[Aridas]

Alright, now if I could only get help on my stealthed/closed/bamboozled ports... That seems to be the winner.

[Reese Tora]

out of curiosity, what all have you checked? maybe making a list of everything checked will ring a bell as to soemthing you havn't checked after all? (also seing a list will stop me from being an idiot and suggesting stuff you tried right off the bat)

(for instance, i was about to ask if you have a router or hardware firewall between your computer and the internet, but that may have been the first thing you checked)

[Aridas]

I'll have a hard time remembering, but i'll go over everything at the top of my head.

It's NOT because of a firewall, it in fact doesn't even work on a fresh install of Windows with no firewall in place.
It's NOT improperly forwarded ports
It WON'T change status if I run the program that needs the port open (someone actually suggested I do that.)
All ports are stealthed (said that already, but...)
Resetting the modem to default, restarting it, turning it off and on, does NOT help
It's NOT likely an automatic firmware upgrade, but I have no way to check this.
Not using the router is NOT an option, because the modem and router are one unit.
DMZ doesn't fix my problem

At one point, my comp was set to automatically get an IP. It used to get them in the 192.168.2.1x range, but recently it's been giving all computers and devices IPs in the 192.168.2.8x range. I've since switched to a static IP since I'm tired of going back to port mapping to fix it. I have no idea if both this and my problem happened simultaneously, but the fact my computer is doing its damnedest to be invisible and unavailable to the interwebs is overriding my concern for changed IPs.