Archive through July 16, 2003
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TV ClubHouse: archive: 2003 June - July: Computer Problem - I need advice/help (ARCHIVE): Archive through July 16, 2003

Whoami

Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:51 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Well, I'm still trying to get my DSL back up. I only have 20 hours of dial up with my Earthlink account, and I can't research a new computer comfortably with that.

I got to the Linksys site you provided Dra. The first one on that list is mine. I downloaded the zip file, but it must not have downloaded all the way or something, cause it came up as an unrecognizable file type. I tried all kinds of tricks opening it up, to no avail.

So, I decided to get rid of that download, and try and re-download. But now, I click on that link for the first etherfast card, and it will go no further. I get the "working in background" cursor, but absolutly nothing else. No page trying to load, or anything, and not even a "page cannot be displayed." I hit the ctl-alt-del to get the programs running, and I don't even get that the zip file download is on the list, not even a "not responding" listing. Naturally, all the other links on that page work. Just not the one I want.

Draheid

Monday, July 14, 2003 - 01:03 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Whoami: I have downloaded the .zip file and made it into a self-extracting .exe file. Right-Click on the link below and 'Save Target As' this file. Once you have saved it, double-click on the file and you should see a dialog box to unzip the files. The default folder I set is C:\NetDrivers so if you just click 'Unzip' you should see a message that '84 file(s) Unzipped Successfully'. Then you can click 'Ok' then 'Close'. Next, try to install the drivers again giving that path (C:\NetDrivers\Win98\) as the location of the drivers.

<Link removed per request> (File size = 560K due to adding the 'Self Extracting' feature)

Hope this helps.

Whoami

Monday, July 14, 2003 - 04:48 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Yay! I'm back in through DSL! Thank you Dra! Too bad I don't have all my bowing/smooching/hugging smilies any more (well, they're saved to floppy somewhere in the mess on my desk, but not on hard drive right now). Anyway, use your imagination on the gifs I would be posting now.

Of course, my display is still real hokey. I used to run in 256 color, but the only options I have now are 16color, or 2 color. But I can live with that until my new 'puter comes. At least I'm able to communicate with y'all again!

I had to re-install Windows again today. All kinds of wierd errors, and missing files it thought I'd deleted. In fact, it was about the third attempt at re-installing over the last couple of days. The other times, it would get errors and shut down the setup. It wouldn't even load the ethernet with your files, cause it asked for the Windows CD too, and then it thought the files weren't there. So, I reinstalled, and finally got to where I could use your files Dra, and here I am!

Thank you so much for your help!

Juju2bigdog

Monday, July 14, 2003 - 05:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Yay Whoami!!!

Juju2bigdog

Monday, July 14, 2003 - 07:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
And another Yay! I finally managed to wrestle the network passwords off the screen at sign-in. If Tess were here, she would give me a cookie for that.

Whoami

Monday, July 14, 2003 - 08:58 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
OK folks. If you want, please check the Whoami's New Computer thread and tell me what you think of the specs I came up with....

Babyruth

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 07:11 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Juju, here's a cookie dispenser to hold you over til Tess gets back. Just flick the lever with your paw.
jujucookies

Bob2112

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 08:46 am EditMoveDeleteIP
<...tosses cookies at dawg...>

Sisalou

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 09:51 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Advice please. I am going to upgrade to windows xp and I just received my memory upgrade from Gateway. Do I really need to go and buy a "grounding wrist strap"? Can I improvise? Or better yet, do I even attempt to do this myself?

LOL - Any suggestions?

Sisalou

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 10:26 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Well, I've decided to go buy the grounding wrist strap. If ya'll don't see me around these parts for awhile you will know that I screwed up my computer. Wish me luck.

Feelin_Good

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 11:07 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Always use a grounding strap when you are working inside your computer. Static electricity can ruin your comp.

Sisalou

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 12:31 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
O.K. I added the memory, used my grounding strap and my computer survived. (I cut my finger though trying to get the darn case back on.)

Now I am waiting for Gateway to email me some stuff (?) that I am going to copy to a floppy and they will help me install winxp from there.

Yeah - Half way home.

Juju2bigdog

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 12:50 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Yay Sisalou!

Thanks for the cookies, BR and Sponge.

Weinermr

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 04:48 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Tossing cookies, puking in bushes... it all seems the same.

Bob2112

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 - 06:27 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Exactly, Mr. Weiner.

Whoami

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 01:30 am EditMoveDeleteIP
I can see again!

Slowly and surely I am getting this poor old computer back up and running. The Video software and sound card software refused to load. So I finally found the stuff to download from the respective sites.

Now I'm back in 256 color, and viewing at 800x600. Up till today, I could only see faint words over a bunch of dots on the pages here (had to hightlight when I wanted to read), and all the pages were too big for the screen. Now I can see again, and see it all in one fell swoop, instead of having to scroll back and forth!

Of course, now everything looks a bit small after seeing it distorted large the last few days. But I'll get used to it!

Geeze, if I get this thing all up and running....nah, Mom said I still deserved an updated new computer, even if I got this one fixed.

Whoami

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 05:05 am EditMoveDeleteIP
OK, so I still have a few glitches.

When booting up, I get an error: The Creative SoundBlaster PCI 64 driver cannot load MIDI Waveset. MIDI playback has been disabled. So far, I don't think I've seen where that causes a problem in anything I'm trying to do. It's just an annoying error to pop up during boot up.

Also, we already figured out the ethernet diskette may have been damaged, and that's why we had to download from the Linksys site. I do keep all my stuff on the same table with the computer and all, so I suppose it could have gotten demagnetized. Not far away too is the microwave (we keep this system in the kitchen). But, would that also cause harm to CD's? I can understand a floppy, but I thought a CD would be tougher.

The Soundblaster CD, and the ATI (video card) CD also would not load. I also have had two of the three game CD's I tried to load last night not do so. But, I recently lent these to my sis, and she had no problem with them.

So I'm figureing it must be something I still haven't gotten all the way up and running. Like maybe the CD-ROM needs some fine tuning, or maybe it (or something else) is going bad.

I'm not really planning on spending a lot of time re-loading everything on this (I want to save all that effort for the new computer). But Mom said maybe she'd keep this one somewhere so she could play on it (and feel comfortable she couldn't potentially "ruin" the new computer). So, I figured I'd try to load some of the stuff on.

Draheid

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 09:07 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Whoami: The MIDI driver will only affect .mid files from being heard on your computer. A lot of sites where you might find graphic files will have midi music files to 'sooth' you as you browse their graphics. No big deal except that it shouldn't be there. It should not affect anything else for now.

The only other possible problem is if you have a game that uses midi music for the game itself. You might not be able to hear the music, or possibly even play the game. I don't know for sure.

Magnetics can NOT affect CDs as they are an optical medium and therefore immune to magnetic waves. I would have to suspect that you might have a 'dirty' CD-ROM drive. Dust/dirt can sneak into the computer in many different ways. It may be that some CDs are more sensitive to the dust/dirt then others which is why you can read some and not others.

You can pick up a CD 'cleaner' from most music or electronics stores and try using that on your machine. You should ask about a kit to clean the CDs also. That might help with some of the problems you're having. I would also suggest to go ahead and clean any/all discs you wish to use with the new computer before using them to make sure you don't carry any debri into the new drives.

Hope that helps.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 09:51 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Yay Whoami!!! We're gonna be calling you Whoheid any day now. You are like a dog with a bone (which I, of course, admire, since I do the same thing).

Edit: Oh, and Whoami? Take the new computer and run. Don't look back or second guess. You deserve it. It was being up in the middle of the night on that computer, playing with folks here as a matter of fact, that saved your Mom's life. well, okay, maybe there was a touch of divine providence involved as well

Weinermr

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 12:11 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
My question didn't get answered in Who's thread, so I'll ask it again here.

Does anyone know any specific PC manufacturers who sell their PC's with all the software including the operating system (Windows XP)? Not a recovery disk which restores the PC to its brand new condition in case of emergency, but all the original programs.

I bought my first PC that way in late 1998 and its wonderful to have all the original programs AND the operating system.

My laptop came with a recovery disk instead of the software, and I much prefer having the individual programs.

I don't want/expect anyone to take tons of time doing research on this, but if anyone has any information along these lines, I'd appreciate it.

Draheid

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 12:20 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Weinermr: To my knowledge, the only companies that I've seen providing original software media are those that build the systems from various components. Where they have to load the software onto the machine after building it for the customer, they will include those discs used to build it up. These folks usually buy the packages as OEM versions with the stipulation that they will only be sold 'with a new computer' and not seperately. Of course, it's not uncommon for some of the less scrupulous vendors to sell the OEM versions at reduced prices.

As most of the major manufacturers mass produce their machines, having a common 'build' where they make up one machine with all the software loaded then create a disk image to mass-copy onto multiple hard drives for installation. They then make a 'recovery CD' with the same image on it. This is a more cost effective method of distribution for them.

That's what I know. Hope it helps.

Whoami

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 12:38 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
So, with this recovery cd (that I'll probably end up getting from Dell), if I have an eventual meltdown like this one has had, and have to reformat the hard drive, the recovery cd would re-install the OS, and whatever original software it came with? I guess I could live with that.

Oh, and I cleaned the CD-ROM twice, but I suppose it could still be pretty dirty. We do have a rather dusty house. I'll have to look into the cleaners that clean the CD too. Thanks for the tip.

Whoheid...heheheh, I like it! Yea, I can be pretty dogged about things. That can get me in trouble too sometimes. I've had a few employers who can't get why I'd spend extra time on a project making sure it was right. I guess they thought I should just close my eyes and run, and however it turned out, whatever. Funny thing...many of my previous employers are no longer around (I guess they just couldn't survive without me!).

Weinermr

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 12:39 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Thanks Dra, that's kind of how I understood it to work. When I bought my PC in 1998 it was from a no-name company, but they used name brand components to build it. The hard drive (a Western Digital) failed the second week I had the PC, but they replaced it, and I've had no problems with it since then. The modem failed 6 months ago (U.S. Robotics), but besides that the PC has been absolutely reliable.

I just don't like being forced to restore everything vs. individual programs or files. It's my own little prejudice I guess.

Thanks again.

Weinermr

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 12:42 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Who,

The recovery disk restores everything to the state it was in the day you bought the PC. If you have installed software updates, patches, new programs, etc. since that date, you would have to reinstall those all over again if you ran the recovery disk.

I had to do that several months ago when my laptop's hard drive got wiped out by a nasty virus or something. It was a pain, but probably my fault in the first place.

Draheid

Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - 01:36 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
FWIW: One note of a personal experience, when i bought my latest Compaq computer, the discs that were included would not have restored the computer if the problem had been a hard drive failure. They setup the HD with a copy of the image on a seperate partition which can be used to restore the primary partition in case of a software related failure. I had to order (for $10 I think) the actual restore CD set from Compaq direct. If you have the opportunity to check with Dell, you might ask them specifically about what the recovery CD that is included will do for you in case of a problem. "Does the recovery CD contain the entire image of the hard drive should that component fail?"

Just a thought, FWIW.