Archive through May 07, 2003
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TV ClubHouse: Archive: 2003 May: Computer Problem - I need advice/help (ARCHIVES): Archive through May 07, 2003

Sia

Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 08:11 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Somehow I reformatted things on my page slightly--and I like the results, I just don't know how I did it!! LOL. When I open a web-browser page (I'm using IE6 on a system using WinXP) my window now gives me a nifty little bar at the bottom of the screen which tells the name of the TVCH thread in which I'm reading/posting. What made this change? I like it! I really, really like it! I used to have to scroll up to find out where I was.

Juju2bigdog

Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 08:24 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Sia, that must be an IE setting. I always have that, and I didn't do anything special to get it.

Update from the Juju2bigdog household. Nothing new except we loved the movie. LOL. I was going to start moving files from old hard drive to new tonight but then I read the instructions, and it calls for taking screwdrivers to things again, and Bigdog had some wine, so he is NOT taking screwdrivers to MY computer tonight.

Willsmom

Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 09:27 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
You guys are so helpful!
Ok Draheid I got rid of the start up items I didn't need and then just got rid of Incredimail...I loved it, but I think it used up too much memory. Thanks for the explicit instructions...I needed them. I've downloaded the Adware and will run it when I get off here. I went back and read through what you told JuJu to do about memory and then went to that website and found out what I need to get for my computer. Thank you!

Juju....thanks for the info...I'll be checking out Office depot tomorrow. Good luck with your puter surgery!

Jed...I haven't downloaded any screensavers lately, but have before...I got rid of them last night and my computer has run better today, but I've done so much to it...who knows!

I'm feeling better already about my computer and don't even want to kick in the monitor anymore...thanks for the therapy guys!

Draheid

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 06:27 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Sia: It sounds like you clicked 'View - Status Bar' to enable the Status Bar at the bottom of your screen. It is a toggle so clicking it again will turn it off.

Hope that helps.

Luvmom

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 07:31 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Hi Dra,
I just downloaded media player and tried to play the videos.It just played the audio and I got some kind of Ambiance.It said nothing about a codec.What else is there to do?

Draheid

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 08:25 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Luvmom: I'm afraid your going to have to do a little looking for a codec to play these files on your computer. Since there are so many formats in use, it is difficult to know what will work for you.

A couple of sources for codecs are Divx.com where you will find the Divx codec and a different player that might work for you. You could also look at MovieCodec.com where you'll find a list of codecs with links for downloading some of them.

Some also require hardware in your computer do perform some of the rendering needed to see the video such as a DVD player and a video card which supports the format used by DVDs.

Hope this helps.

Spygirl

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 08:57 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Drah, I think I've figured out a way for you to make money and not have to go back to work. Just charge a $1.00 for every question submitted in this thread and you're set! LOL...you can set up Pay Pal or Pro Pay. It'll be easy :) I'd pay!

Squaredsc

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 09:04 am EditMoveDeleteIP
i would pay too.

Luvmom

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 09:46 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Thanks Drah,
I'll try that,and I agree with Spygirl.....

Sia

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 09:54 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Cool, Dra, thanks. I wondered what I did. It's weird to accidentally do something RIGHT!!
paperdoll

Luvmom

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 11:06 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Drah,
I just downloaded the Divx player and it works!!Thanks so much.Now I can watch my RJ Helton avis.My daughter is also going to be happy.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 01:02 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Juju2bigdog family update: This morning while I was out, Bigdog connected up the wires, put in the transfer diskette, and transferred files from old 6 GB hard drive to new 80 GB hard drive. He said it took about an hour, and it was done when I came home. We have only checked a couple things so far, but what we have tested, like the Juno e-mail program (which is a pretty big program that sits on your hard drive, not just a dialer) works just fine.

Now here is a conundrum: Some of you may recall that when I returned home after traveling for five months, I found my 6 GB hard drive was almost full, and I thought it strange because we don't have much more on there than we have on the laptop or the second computer, each of which have about 2.5 GB used up. When Bigdog transferred everything over this morning, it showed that 2.6 GB of the new hard drive was used, about what I thought it should be.

So ... what accounts for the other THREE GB???

<spins head backwards>

Next thing I think we are going to do is put the old 6 GB hard drive into the second computer with the 3GB partitioned drive. I may be back with more questions then.

Twiggyish

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 01:43 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Have you checked My Computer? Do you see anything there? You can do an advanced search/find for the dates you were gone..for any modified files. It will show if you had any activity on your computer while gone. Did you leave your computer connected to the internet? Did someone stay in your house while you were gone?
Do you subscribe to any of those services where they perform computer activity (like Seti) or cancer research?
It's hard to tell without looking at your computer..but I'd say looking in My computer should tell you if there is anything extra in there.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 02:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Twiggs, the only place I know to check is in My Computer. I don't know how full it was before we left, never checked because I always thought I had about 2.5 GB full, and was very surprised when I came back and got a warning that I had less that 200 MB left.

No, nobody was messing with my computer while I was gone, and it was totally unplugged in case of storms and since nobody would be using it.

I guess the thing I am most puzzled about is if we transferred everything over from one hard drive to another today (and so far I have not found anything missing), but it only transferred 2.6 GB, what happened to the rest of it?

I have brought the computer up to my office now and have it all hooked up and am checking it out now. So far, scanner works, Juno e-mail and internet works, printer works, Works address book is intact, Yahoo messenger works, (cough) little bitty chess board I downloaded from internet works, AOL Instant Messenger works, photos are all still there.

Huh!

Draheid

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 02:49 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Juju2bigdog: I would have to believe that it's been filling up for quite a while and you just didn't realize it was happening until you got the warning message.

It's also likely that there are a lot of temp files, cache files, etc that the transfer program didn't move when it was building your new hard drive for use. You might want to 'Search' your hard drive for files larger then 30 Megabytes and see what you come up with. Could be your system swap file is extremely large. Could be the number of restore configurations stored if you've never purged any old ones, etc. Most of these things you won't see normally because they are hiddne and/or system files and most users don't setup the Windows Explorer to view all fines including those.

I'm very glad to see everything went so well with the upgrades. I'm confident you'll see considerable improvements in normal tasks with the extra memory and you will be able to do more at one time without any performance degradation due to insufficient memory. Yay BigDog!!

Let me know if you need any help with the old HD.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 02:50 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Oh! One thing I forgot to mention. Word works. I can notice the extra RAM I added when I open Word. It used to fiddle fuddle around and take a long time opening. Now it opens lickety split. Yay!

Jed245

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 03:01 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Juju there are a few things that can cause an out of memory warning. :o) Here are a few things to consider. When you transfered the old files to the new hard drive did you account for the size of standardized files like windows/iexplorer? If you didn't transfer those files then that is some of what is missing. Also there are help files on your old hard drive that you probablly didn't transfer either. I doubt that they would be much bigger then a few megs, but, that helps to account for some of the space.


What is the operating system of the old computer? Have you defraged your old hard drive? Sometimes drives can become fragmented even if not in use. When this happens it can missreport used space. For example if there is an empty space of about 300 megs between a few different programs then those 300 megs can get lost in the shuffel so to speak :o)

Anothing thing that can happen to miss report used space is an improper shut down. Which, could cause missing chains of information.

Have you cleared up your downloaded /useless files? Internet explorer keeps a cache of everything you view and goto that accounts for some space and depending on your settings can take up alot of space on smaller drives. There are also tempory internet and system files that can take up alot of space.

You likely didn't transfer any of those files either. If you have windows ME or xp I think maybe even 98?..

You can click start/programs/accessories/system tools/disk clean up

Then select the old hard drive and have it remove all the old temporary internet files and downloaded program files. That may free up alot of space i've had up to 5 gigs stored away that way. :o)

There are a few other things that can cause problems like that and miss report used space, but, Those are pretty common and happen alot so I'll leave it at that for now. :o)

I hope that helped

Jed :o)

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 03:07 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I dunno, Dra, I already went through all that checking for big files a few weeks ago when I found the hard drive almost full, if you might recall. When I got the warning, the computer did its own thing of cleaning out temp files. Then I cleaned out all temp files, cache files, even looked for files as small as 500 K, deleted a whole bunch of templates from a picture program at 500 K each just to get some extra room.

I don't know what a system swap file is, and I never thought to look for System Restore points. I take that back. I did come across some pretty big files that I did not know what they were when I was looking for big stuff, and I went and looked them up on Google. I think those were the system swap files, so I did not delete them. BUT they did not make up 3 Gb.

Oh well ... I guess it doesn't matter. I just like things to make sense.

Heh, Bigdog keeps cruising the office to see if I have tried out the CD burner yet. I haven't. That is kind of a low priority for me. BUT, what little I did look, it offered me an option to prepare a CD-RW disc for writing. I don't have any RW discs. Don't tell me a CD-RW only writes to RW discs and not R's? Nah, couldn't be. Okay, I'll figure that out later. I guess I better get all my rebates for this stuff figured out and sent in. :)

Draheid

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 03:28 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Juju2bigdog: The RW stands for Re-Writable - similar to a floppy diskette that you can erase and reuse except it's 650-700MB just like a CD-ROM/CD-R. They're a little more expensive and considerably slower to write too (my 24x CD-RW only writes at 10x to RW discs), however, they make great reusable storage for backups & for things you only want to save temporarily. For example, I download episodes of TV shows I miss from the internet then burn them to a CD-RW and watch it on my DVD player - then I can reuse it for the next show or episode I miss. (Note: Not all DVD players can read this type if disc - if you want more info, let me know)

In other (fewer) words - you can use both CD-R & CD-RW discs in your new burner - just depends on what you want to do.

Hope that helps.

Mygetaway

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 03:39 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
This probably has nothing to do with what you guys are talking about, but I had a message like that once, and it was because when they added the new hard drive they didn't set it up as fat 32 or whatever. So my 3 gig was split in two. It also said I had more used than I really did. They couldn't change it after the fact, because windows was already put on it... Anyway, when I upgraded to a new computer last summer, they just ghosted the whole thing over, and now I'm back to one drive again with about 2.30 gbs used.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 03:42 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Jed, looks like you and I were posting at the same time. I have had the Maintenance Wizard set on this machine for years and leave it on all the time for it to perform the maintenance: defragged weekly, scandisk weekly, disk cleanup monthly to delete temp files, downloaded files, etc. Opsys is/was WindowsME.

I wracked my brain over it before I decided to give up and get a bigger hard drive, so it is sort of moot now anyway. Of course, considering I didn't have a whole lot of expertise in the first place, I didn't have a whole lot of wracking to do. LOL.

Thanks for your help, Jed and Dra.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 05:31 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
The conundrum getts nuttier. So Bigdog (now a complete computer building techic, lol) took the 6 Gig hard drive and put it in his old computer that currently has a partitioned 3 Gig hard drive. He has not figured out yet how to get the machine to recognize both drives (although he says he hooked them up like he did my new one, and when he had both of them in my machine, both were recognized).

Anyway, when he hooked my old 6 Gig up as the master and he got the machine to recognize it, he checked how much space was free on that drive (which had been almost full according to my machine). It showed 1.9 Gig used, 4 Gig free!!! Ack!

Draheid

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 07:42 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Juju2bigdog: Sounds like the older machine isn't able to directly handle the entire 6GB drive since you say it's already got a 3GB drive that has been partitioned. Older machines and operating systems cannot handle drive partitions larger the 2GB in a single drive. You will probably need do these things:

1. Make sure the drive is set to the correct master/slave mode for the controller it is on.

2. Go into CMOS setup and configure the drive. It's possible you will need to set the configuration manually for the extra drive.

3. Run FDISK from a DOS prompt in order to partition the drive for use.

4. Format the partitions for use.

Again, if you need detailed information on these, I will need the brand/model # of both the hard drive & the older computer to look them up and provide you with the detailed information. Also, if you need detailed instructions on these 4 steps, please let me know.

Hope this helps.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 08:45 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
The older computer used to have a 4 Gig hard drive. When that one went bad, I bought the small one, which incidentally turned out to be partitioned. It was not partitioned specifically for that machine.

And hmmmmmm, just like I found for the newer computer, I bet I have a Users Guide or something for the motherboard on the old computer. It was a shop-built also, San Francisco, 1997.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 09:55 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Found it - ASUS TXP4 mainboard. And, by golly, it does say something about having to partition and format new IDE hard disk drives. Hmmmmm, maybe we better leave well enough alone. This may be beyond our capabilities. The old computer is just one Bigdog uses for email, Quicken, a couple simple old games, and not much else.