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Archive through February 18, 2005

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: 2005 Mar. ~ 2005 May: All Things Technical: The Help Desk (ARCHIVES): Computer Problems? Ask Here (ARCHIVES): Archive through February 18, 2005 users admin

Author Message
Sia
Member

03-11-2002

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 9:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Please help! My computer screen is bright pink. I can read what's on the screen, but everything is awash in a violent pink hue. I have tried system restore from a few days ago, but that didn't un-do the problem. How do I tell if my monitor is about to die? Thanks for any help.

Compaq FS740 Color monitor
Using Win XP on a Compaq computer

Crossfire
Member

08-07-2001

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 9:23 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Pink monitor....The easiest way to tell if your monitor is about to die (ruling out a computer problem), is to try a different monitor.

Things that could be causing this problem, are a failing electron gun, a cable fault(try wiggling it around/make sure it is tight), and unlikely, but possible is an extraneous magnetic source.

Another thing you should try (actually, try this after you check the cable, and before the other monitor idea as it is easy.) if your monitor has the feature, is the 'degauss' function. Snoop around in the menu's or look for a button to try this.

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 9:29 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Which is why you should always keep a crappy $5 garage sale monitor in the attic or basement for emergencies such as this.

Sia
Member

03-11-2002

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 10:26 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I do have an old monitor. Thanks for the suggestion. I will try this tomorrow. You guys are the greatest!

Sia
Member

03-11-2002

Sunday, January 30, 2005 - 10:30 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I learned a new word today: degauss. Guess it doesn't apply to my monitor, as it is a flat-screen monitor. Cool info, however:


"Ever wonder what that "degauss" button on your monitor does besides make a buzzing noise and cause the screen to go crazy for a second? Though that's its main purpose, the degauss button has another useful feature. To understand it, you'll first need to know that the earth has natural magnetic fields. The magnetic charges from these fields can build up inside your monitor, causing a loss of color accuracy. Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma. If your monitor doesn't have a degauss button, fear not -- many new monitors automatically degauss themselves. If you have a flat-panel display, there is no degauss button because magnetism doesn't build up in flat screen displays."



Jan
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, January 31, 2005 - 9:08 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks for all your help guys. I'll take a listen next time and see what I can see (I don't have a Dell, Half, but my computer was shut off for over a month so maybe that's all it was?? I can hope anyway :-):-))

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 6:20 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Staying at my friend's house in Dallas. She has an almost new laptop with Bluetooth wireless. She has never been able to use the internet via the Bluetooth wireless, even though the computer always shows she is connected at a very high speed. It is not a problem with a password protected connection. She is trying to access at a business location where the owners have a public access wi-fi spot they have invited her to use.

I tried to help her this morning, and even though the wireless connection dialog shows we are already connected, when we try to open a web browser, either IE or Mozilla Firefox, we get an error message saying TCP/IP not enabled. I think it is going to be a simple matter of finding where the box is to check "enable TCP/IP", but for the life of me, I could not find it. I dimly seem to recall checking that box when I set up the wireless on one of my laptops. OS is Windows XP.

Suitsmefine
Member

07-29-2002

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 7:09 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I have a problem....the text on my monitor is HUGE...and the pages are too Huge for my screen, do not ask me what happened but does anyone know how to fix it....(I know this is probably something really simple but I am a computer idiot).

Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 8:35 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Suitsmefine: Try right-clicking on your desktop then left-click on 'Properties' - click on the 'Settings' tab and adjust to a higher resolution if possible. The other setting on the same panel is under 'Appearance' - try changing to a theme that uses a normal font. See if any of that fixes the problem you're seeing. If not, let me know what version of operating system you have and I'll be happy to try to help more.

Lucy
Member

10-08-2002

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 12:16 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Dra, My parents just installed Norton Firewall 2005 on their computer (Windows 98). They were able to register the product, connect to the internet, get email, but the next day when they booted up their computer they couldn't get an internet connection or access email. Any ideas on why Norton might be causing connection problems? Thanks

Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 1:38 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Lucy: I'm not sure I would immediately suspect Norton, although it does sound suspicious. I would suggest they first disable Norton and try connecting.

What type of connection are they using? (ie dialup, cablemodem, dsl, etc)
How do they normally start a connection? (ie click on a connection icon or open Explorer or their e-mail which automatically connects when they are offline.)

You might also suggest they open the Norton program and access the help system there to see if there might be a specific explanation related to this particular problem.

Let me know how I can help.

Lucy
Member

10-08-2002

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 2:12 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Hey Dra, thanks for responding so quickly. My folks have dsl through SBC. They've already talked to SBC and there's no problem on that end. I believe they click a connection icon to connect. They tried disabling Norton, as well as re-booting...no luck. From what I've read there are a lot of people who are unhappy with Norton products...a few have even had similar problems with the firewall. Removing it seemed to be the easiest solution for most.

Thanks for your assistance! If I can get more specifics I'll let you know.

Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 2:35 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Lucy: Yes, I have seen many instances of Norton causing problems. Even when I was working on a help desk for a local DSL provider, the most common question we had to ask was if they were using the Norton products. I'm sorry to say that we never did come up with a solution better than removing the programs. I have to believe they weren't designed to cause problems, however they do seem to be more trouble than any other firewall solution I know about. If they just recently purchased this product, you might want to suggest they return it for another program that would work better for them. I believe ZoneAlarm has a 'Pro' version that can be purchased at retail stores now.

If that isn't an option, you might suggest they contact Norton (Symantec) tech support and try to resolve the problem through them. If they do go this route, I would sure appreciate hearing what suggestions Norton has to fix the problem so others might be able to do the same on their computers too.

Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Lucy
Member

10-08-2002

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 3:07 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Can you believe Symantec wants $29.95 to answer technical questions about the product?? I know they won't be doing that. That's interesting what you said about Norton being more problematic that other firewalls. I think in the end they'll probably just return it and get something else. If by some chance they get it working I'll let you know!! Thanks again.

Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 5:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Lucy, I realize it would be of little use to your parents since they don't seem to be able to get online, however, it's interesting to see on the Norton support for Norton Personal Firewall 2005, the top problem listed for support is:
Cannot access the Internet after installing Norton Internet Security or Norton Personal Firewall 2005.

My personal recommendation would be to replace norton with something that might be easier to use, if that is an option. Or you might try opening that support site yourself and talk them through checking some of the suggestions to see if you can get it to work.

Hope this helps.

Lucy
Member

10-08-2002

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 7:34 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Well, I got an email from my folks saying that they removed Norton Firewall and their computer is functioning normally again. Somehow I doubt they'll want to attempt installing it again, but I know they'll be interested in reading the links you provided. We all appreciate the time you spent trying to help us out.

Hope you and Jmm are having a nice Valentine's Day. Give Ms. Melodie a big hug and tell her I hope she feels better soon.

Draheid
Moderator

09-09-2001

Monday, February 14, 2005 - 8:17 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Lucy: If they can just return it for a refund, have them visit Zonelabs.com and download the free version of ZoneAlarm to protect their computer. (Or they can download without wading through the menu options by using THIS LINK instead.

I'm happy to help whenever I can. Hope you all had a great Valentines day as well.

Lucy
Member

10-08-2002

Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 10:10 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks Dra, I've passed on the information.

Cathie
Member

08-16-2000

Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 5:38 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Does anyone have any experience with Windows ME? I am trying to help my secretary fix her home PC, which is a 633MHz Celeron with 192MB RAM and a 20 GB hard drive. Her problem was that she can't install anything because she is out of hard drive space, so I was helping her remove unused programs.

In viewing the hard drive through My Computer it shows she only has 140MB free, but in adding up the total bytes in all of her directories she should have over 15GB free. I finally remembered to check to see if any files and folders were hidden and they were. She has a Restore folder on the root directory that contains 14.2GB in thousands of files. There are four subdirectories, including Archive and Temp (can't remember the rest now) and a lot of them are CAB files. They are dated from Sept '01 through today (PC was new in 11-00.)

Is this a part of Windows ME? Why in the world would she have over 14GB of restore files with less than 4GB of program and file data on the PC?

I tried to move the Restore folder into a new shell directory to then re-boot and see if it really mattered, but the directory couldn't be moved because the files were "in use."

Any suggestions?

Bob2112
Member

06-12-2002

Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 5:45 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju loves ME. She will come along and help.

You should probably be able to disable system restore to get rid of the old restore files. Then reenable system restore so you begin getting new restore points.
Leave the CAB files alone and I don't know about the other 2 directories.

Juju will know.


Bob2112
Member

06-12-2002

Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 5:47 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Disabling or enabling Windows Me System Restore

Cathie
Member

08-16-2000

Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 11:21 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thanks, Bob!!!

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Friday, February 18, 2005 - 8:05 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
What Bob said.

Very funny, Bob. Although, strangely enough, in retrospect, back when I only had a 6 Gig hard drive with Windows ME, and it was full, and I couldn't figure out how in heck it was full, that was probably the problem.

I do still have two computers with Windows ME. They are now Bigdog's play computer and Bigdog's play laptop.

Texannie
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, February 18, 2005 - 8:59 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
too funny, i was just coming in to post the same question!!! do you hav to manually go in a delete the restore files or does just disabling it and then reinabling get rid of the old restore files?

Bob2112
Member

06-12-2002

Friday, February 18, 2005 - 9:57 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Just disabling it should delete the files, but some of the articles implied that you may need to reboot while it is disabled for the files to be deleted. The surest thing would be to disable system restore, reboot, enable system restore.

In Windows XP you are able to specify the maximum amount of disk space to use for system restore. I'm guessing they did not offer this option in ME, so you should probably repeat the above steps every few months to free up the space.