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Archive through March 03, 2008

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: Jan. 2008 ~ Mar. 2008: All Things Technical: The Help Desk: Computer Problems? Ask Here: Archive through March 03, 2008 users admin

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Kc103
Member

07-13-2004

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 - 8:36 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Kc103 a private message Print Post    
Hoping that someone here might be computer savvy. I have an HP media center pavilion pc running on Windows XP. Ever since I moved and hooked it back up, my cd-rom drive and cd/dvd writer drive haven't worked. After trying a variety of things over the past few months, I finally decided to do a system recovery this past weekend. I thought that might put things back in synch.

The system recovery finished and my computer restarted. A screen came on saying that the recovery had been successful and to click the "finish" button on the screen to go to the desktop and internet. Well, I clicked on the "finish" button and the hourglass came on....and that's all that ever happened since. I've restarted it manually and the Windows start-up screen comes on, but then it goes to that same "recovery was successful" with the "finish" button on it. I tried unplugging everything and plugging it back in. Nothing will change. :-(
Did I ruin my computer????

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can try to get it moving again?? If not, can anyone recommend any service tech places (online, phone, in-store) that are reliable and kind of reasonably priced? This is the first time I've ever had something happen like this. Thanks for any replies.

Costacat
Member

07-15-2000

Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 8:53 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Costacat a private message Print Post    
Teach, if you've been using that battery for two years, then it's time to buy a new one.

Kc, do you have a backup of your system? If so, I'd suggest reinstalling Windows (rather than trying a recovery). Recovery can have inconsistent results, as you've seen.

As far as recommending a service, I would stay far FAR away from Geek Squad. How old is your HP? Is it still under warranty? I'd do two things... check the HP site to see if there are local resellers/repair places. And then let your fingers do the walking in your phone book. Call around and see which place might be able to fix your computer, and then go in and talk to 'em. Just don't do Geek Squad.

Rosie
Member

11-12-2003

Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 9:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Rosie a private message Print Post    
KC103, in the FAQ section of my XP Manual, it says:

"If you move to another location and your computer starts acting wonky, nothing will help except to move back to where you used to live."






Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 8:41 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Anybody got the slightest idea why my Yahoo calendar quit sending me notifications of events? I quit getting messages about 4-5 days ago, have not changed any settings. I am stumped.

I uninstalled and reinstalled Yahoo Messenger tonight. That doesn't appear to be the problem. I have it set so that it should actually send me two messages for each event. The first should come in on Yahoo Messenger as a little popup when it arrives, and then it should come as an e-mail as well. I am not getting either the popups OR the e-mails. But when I go to the calendar, the events are on there and they show that notifications are to be sent.

Very wacky.

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - 3:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Okay, so I was reading somewhere, maybe in the Yahoo questions and answer forums where somebody had a similar Yahoo Messenger problem to mine a year ago. It just quit sending them reminders for no apparent reason, and none of the replies had any ideas. So the questioner said s/he went into Options and hit Save again on the Reminders option page. I did that yesterday, to no avail. Today I went back to that page and changed the default, which it has been set at 1 hour ever since I started using Yahoo calendar, eight years or so, from 1 hour ahead to 5 minutes, or some other time figure, I forget. THEN I hit Save. And now it works. It is a setting that one usually changes everytime ones sets a reminder anyway.

There is no reason that sort of tweaking should have done anything. Very wacky stuff.

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - 3:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Thanks, Juju. That worked for me too. You are a freaking genius.



Rissa
Member

03-20-2006

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - 4:10 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Rissa a private message Print Post    
RFLMAO!!!

I could use some help with my MS Office Outlook. It has actually been *broken* for about 8 months now, I have been using mail2web.com or my desktop as a workaround because I am terrified of losing my data if I need to reinstall.

What happens is this: I double-click on the icon to open the program and it looks like it gets about half-way open. The outer edge of the frame appears, the box in the middle with the program name pops up and it stays that way. If I am patient enough and don't touch anything else then after about half an hour the program opens but no mail is visible (it does say at the bottom that there are over 200 messages as it should). If I hit send/receive that seems to work as normal and those new messages are visible. If I go away from the inbox then return: those new messages are now invisible too. If during that initial half-hour time period (of waiting for the program to open) I try to use anything else on the computer (internet, wp, freecell) then the computer completely freezes and I need to do a hard reboot.

I have tried to find something online to the point of exhaustion. As far as I can see it seems to be that my email program has *forgotten* where the mail is being filed. So I guess what I would like to know is if anyone knows how I find where my computer is hiding my email inbox and sent mail files and how do I let my email program know where to look for it?

Hope that made sense. (I am not a freaking genius after all LOL)

ETA If I search INBOX I do get inbox.dbx but thats only 137 KB so can't be right. I have a lot of attachments on the email so it will be a few dozen MBs at least.

Jimmer
Moderator

08-30-2000

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - 5:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jimmer a private message Print Post    
Wow Juju. You're sure lucky that you found that knowledgeable person to help you out!

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 - 8:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Rissa, I don't know or use Outlook but it seems like there ought to be a way to save your data. Once you figure out how to do that, save it again someplace else, like on a flash drive.

Then I would uninstall Outlook and reinstall it.

And after you reinstall it, you should be able to import your data back into the reinstalled program. And get cracking on those 200 e-mails.

You can also try Googling your problem. The chances are excellent that somebody else has had happen to them exactly what happened to you. The key of course is finding the appropriate words to search on.

Rissa
Member

03-20-2006

Friday, February 01, 2008 - 9:43 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Rissa a private message Print Post    
THanks Juju. I think I will have to find a tech who is willing to sit down with me while he works on the computer. My problem is that I think my inbox, etc has been renamed. I can't find it, so I can't back it up. THe last time I brought a computer is, I made it clear that I wanted to be called before they reinstalled software and they didn't. If I had not backed up my data about a month earlier... I would have lost everything.

Dipo
Member

04-23-2002

Friday, February 08, 2008 - 9:14 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Dipo a private message Print Post    
Today I came home to a weird thing happening to my computer. There was a black screen like the kind you get when you have a dos promt, and it said INTEL UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)then some other stuff.

Then there was DHCP. . . . and a underline and a right slash was rotating, then it would say No DHCP or proxy DHP were received. I tried escape and it said Exiting PXE ROM; Then it would start all over again.

I finally had to take the battery off the back and unplug it. I finally restarted and then I got Checking the file system on C.. check the disks for consistency. I let that run and it said everything was okay, but that it found free space maekd as allocated to the master file table. It said some other stuff but I couldn't catch it before it started up.

Anyway, I am finally back online and wondered if this is a problem, or I should just move on.

Oh, and I normally leave the computer on and I was running the africa cam for the kitties to listen to.

What do you guys think??

Chiliwilli
Member

09-04-2006

Saturday, February 09, 2008 - 12:45 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Chiliwilli a private message Print Post    
I never leave my computer on. Mostly because DH gets testy about it and it's not worth listening to him. Do you have a 'restore' disc or partition? I just turned on my laptop a few nights ago and got a totally blank screen and, to make a long story short, HP finally had to help me restore from the restore partition to clear up the problems.

Have you run the virus scanner and a spybot program since that happened?

Dipo
Member

04-23-2002

Saturday, February 09, 2008 - 12:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Dipo a private message Print Post    
I ran virus scanner had no issues, don't have a spybot installed, maybe I should put on in and run it. Don't we have a list of them somewhere?

I really would love to know what it was,though.

Costacat
Member

07-15-2000

Saturday, February 09, 2008 - 7:33 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Costacat a private message Print Post    
Dipo, is this a computer at home? Is it connected to a corporate network? Cause here's a description of what PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) means:

PXE is a form of smart boot ROM, built into Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 and 3Com 3c905c Ethernet cards, and Ethernet-equipped Intel motherboards. PXE supports DHCP configuration and provides low-level NIC access services.

If you did not install it, you may want to contact your computer manufacturer (or after market NIC) to find out how to disable it.

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Saturday, February 09, 2008 - 8:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Oh, just great, remind me of the Africa cam. Just when I have been free of that addiction for at least six months. Thanks a whole hell of a lot.

<does a triple back flip and races off to the Africa cam>



Dipo
Member

04-23-2002

Sunday, February 10, 2008 - 5:33 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Dipo a private message Print Post    
LOL, Juju! Costacat, this is a home laptop. Very odd, I did run a norton check and got no issues. Downloaded and ran spybot, got tons of issues that I fixed.

Wonder what made that try to start up. And how my computer got taken out of windows to do it. Very weird.

Oh, and why would spybot find stuff an Norton not?

Riviere
Member

09-09-2000

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 9:38 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Riviere a private message Print Post    
My hubby the techno wizard says Norton has issues and he uses McCaffey instead. Just an idea...

Costacat
Member

07-15-2000

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 9:55 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Costacat a private message Print Post    
Actually, I think McAfee has issues. And yes, I used to work for them, had access to free software (as most of our dev dept did), and none of us used McAfee on our personal systems. We ALL used Norton.

By the way, it's MAC-aff-fee not Mac-AFF-fee.

Bob2112
Member

06-12-2002

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 10:16 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Bob2112 a private message Print Post    
Dipo: Norton is an anti virus program, so hopefully it does not find stuff on your computer during a full scan. You want viruses detected in real-time and prevented from getting installed.

Spybot identifies and cleans up Adware and Spyware, so it usually will find many things that you may want to clean up but are not necessarily bad for your computer. For example, if you allow all cookies in your browser, then you will have many tracking cookies that may affect things like what advertisements you see at the top of certain web pages.

If we are voting, I think McAfee and Norton have issues. I use AVG.


Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 10:48 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Ladytex a private message Print Post    
I agree with Bob.

Jimmer
Moderator

08-30-2000

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 10:55 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jimmer a private message Print Post    
So do I. I found Norton worked but it tends to slow things to a crawl. It's resource heavy.

Teachmichigan
Member

07-22-2001

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 4:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Teachmichigan a private message Print Post    
I agree too. We've used AVG in conjunction w/Adware and Spybot and have never (knock on wood) had a virus. AVG is free - an added bonus! :-)

Juju2bigdog
Member

10-27-2000

Thursday, February 28, 2008 - 11:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Juju2bigdog a private message Print Post    
Ditto what Bob2112, Ladytex, Jimmer, and Teachmichigan said.

Stacey718995
Member

07-06-2007

Saturday, March 01, 2008 - 12:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Stacey718995 a private message Print Post    
dumb computer question but this one is driving me crazy.

Where can I fix this setting.

I have a new laptop and when I click on anything to open in a new window it opens in this really tiny square, isn't there a place that you can change how a new window opens or what size it opens to? I can't for the life of me find that

Thanks in advance

Rissa
Member

03-20-2006

Monday, March 03, 2008 - 4:34 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Rissa a private message Print Post    
Stacey, if there is a better answer I am sure someone will enlighten both of us. What has worked for me is to resize the little window by stretching it (not by clicking on the window icon is the far upper right corner, beside the X). Sometimes I have to fiddle a bit and resize it after clicking on that icon and then click it again, resize it again.... but after playing a bit it seems to *take*. There is probably a more official and clever way to do it, but if works, right?