Author |
Message |
Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Monday, February 09, 2004 - 7:28 am
Draheid baby: you up yet? Computer problems are solved but I need to talk to you briefly if you have time to run up to chat.
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Monday, February 09, 2004 - 7:38 am
I'm there now, GAL.
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Mware
Member
09-14-2001
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 10:34 am
Anybody know right now whether people with e-mail on AOL are having trouble receiving messages? I've sent several over the last day or two and my server's telling me that they are being delayed. I can receive from any e-mail address, and I can send to all addresses not on AOL, so I don't know where the problem lies.
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Cathie
Member
08-16-2000
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 6:21 pm
I'm on AOL and have not noticed any delay today. I sent a couple of emails from work to my AOL account and they all arrived promptly. Does anyone have a suggestion for a replacement video/graphics card on my 3 year old PC? The main problem we're having is streaking and ghosting/shadowing of lines, text, etc. I thought the problem was with the monitor, but have tried another with the same results, and also tried the original monitor hooked up to my laptop and it was fine. I have also re-installed the video card driver with no change in results. The current video card is an NVIDIA TNT2 Pro, and it has been okay, but I think I would like something better now--we use the PC for digital video editing, DVD creation, etc., so I want something that will do so fast and smoothly. There are such variations in prices, from $49 to $500. I know we don't want the $49 one, but I also don't want to buy one that has more features, etc., than we need. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 7:08 pm
Cathie: Have you tried upgrading the drivers for your current card? Perhaps downgrading instead? Do you see the same problems at different resolutions and/or color depth? Possibly going into the advanced settings and adjust the refresh rate would help. I don't recall ever seeing a video card go bad before so I'm a little surprised you're having these problems. Give these ideas a try and let me know what you discover please. Hope this helps.
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Bob2112
Member
06-12-2002
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 10:19 pm
Cathie: I'm having the same problem with an NVIDIA GeForce 256. It was replaced once under warranty and has now started having the same problem, which is very similar to what you describe. Mine was bad under Windows 98 and is still bad after upgrading to Windows XP. With a 3 year old computer, you'll have to determine if it has a version 1.0 or 2.0 AGP port. That card looks like a 4x card, so that usually means an AGP 2.0 slot. My card is a 4x, but was deisgned to work in the older AGP 1.0 slot. The biggest thing you'll need to avoid is the higher end 8x cards that are designed to work in the newest version 3.0 AGP slots. Ack! That reads like Greek! What brand and/or model of PC do you have? Do you have any specs that identify the version of the AGP port? How much memory is on the current card? Hopefully you have a 2.0 AGP slot because it is getting extremely difficult to find older cards that will work in a 1.0 slot. I think I've found one that is still sold on-line, but I won't feel 100% sure until I plug it in.
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Cathie
Member
08-16-2000
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:20 pm
Thanks for the suggestions! } Draheid, I tried both the latest drivers from the NVIDIA site and the HP update site for this PC. I haven't tried downgrading yet. Would that be likely to make a difference since there was no recent upgrade before the problem started? If so, where would I be able to find an old version of the driver? Also, I have tried different resolutions and color depth but they don't have any effect on the screen. Bob, The PC is an HP model XP789. I can't find any data regarding the version of the AGP port--not really sure where to look, though. HP has some specs for the XP789 on their support site but I haven't found any specific AGP port mentioned there. The video card is listed as: Attribute Properties Video Graphics AGP Interface Controller TNT Pro 32 MB Graphics card Video Memory 32 MB Nvidia, AGP upgradable I'm glad you mentioned that there are different versions of the AGP slot because I would have assumed anything marked AGP would work, now I guess my problem is finding out which version I have!
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:33 pm
Cathie & Bob(2112): Here are the specs in question from HPs website: North Bridge System Chipset: AMD-751 chipset with AGP/PCI/Memory controller supports a 200MHz Front Side Bus (FSB), supports PC-100 SDRAM DIMMs, complies with AGP 2.0 specifications for 1X and 2X.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:56 pm
Mware, I just now got in two messages from my sister who is on AOL. She sent them over 8 hours ago.
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Cathie
Member
08-16-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 12:28 am
Thank you, thank you, Draheid!!! If I am interpreting everything correctly that is good and I should be able to easily replace the AGP card. Now, do you have any reccomendations for a good card? We don't do any heavy duty gaming, but do want good video for digital editing.
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Mware
Member
09-14-2001
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:02 am
Thanks, Juju. Problem seems to have cleared up this morning, even though the messages I sent never showed up at their destinations yesterday.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:07 am
Well, Mware, my sister replied this morning that the one I sent last night arrived 7 hours later, at 7:30 this morning.
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Jan
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:24 am
Yesterday, I finally defragged my computer and did a thorough scan on drive c. Of course, I didn't know when I started that my computer would be tied up all day and night!!! Does it normally take 2.5 hours to defrag and 6.5 hours to do a thorough scan that finds no errors? Is it necessary to waste this amount of time very often??  
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:33 am
Jan: The thorough scan isn't necessary except when you suspect problems with your hard drive. Defrag can take several hours depending on how frequently you run it and how much activity you have on the computer between defrags. If you run it nightly, you should find it's much faster - kind of like catching up on the board - miss a day and you'll be forever trying to catch up! lol
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Jan
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 1:15 pm
Oh, thanks Dra...so how long does an "unthorough" scan take? and how often is it necessary (or is it ever??)
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 1:35 pm
Jan: A regular 'Scandisk' without the surface scan usually only takes a few minutes. The surface scan is usually reserved when you notice serious problems. In fact, Defrag will tell you if you even need to run scandisk before it begins defragmenting the hard drive anyway. Or if you have improperly shut down your computer, scandisk will run before the system finishes booting up anyway.
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Jan
Member
08-01-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 2:49 pm
Thanks once again Dra
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Sage
Member
07-20-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 9:48 pm
This really isn't a problem with my computer, but it's an email I got today from my Dad, and was wondering if this was a legit thing to do, and if I did, would it really work. How to Protect Your Address Book I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in it's simplicity. I received it from a friend. As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your e-mail address book, and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates. This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact, that the worm has gotten into your system. Here's what you do; first, open your address book and click on "new contact", Just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of e-mail addresses. In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in AAA, Also use address AAA@a.aaa Now, Here's what you've done and why it works: The name AAA will be placed at the top of your address book as entry #1. This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. But, when it tries to send itself to AAA, it will be undeliverable because of the phony e-mail address you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected. Here's the second great advantage of this method: If an e-mail cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your IN BOX almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an e-mail telling you that an e-mail addressed to AAA could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it! Pretty slick, huh? If everybody you know does this then you need not ever worry about opening mail from friends. Pass this on to all your friends.
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Bob2112
Member
06-12-2002
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:03 pm
This has been around for a few years and the general consensus is that it would deter few, if any, mass mailing worm viruses. Most "worms" either send messages to individual addresses selected randomly from your address book or individual messages to everyone in your address book. One bad address would not stop the other emails from going through. Also, many new worms bypass your mail client altogether and use their own SMTP engine to send the email. So, even if your mail client would have stopped the propogation, it will have no affect on a worm that uses its own engine. Adding the bogus address shouldn't hurt anything, but if everyone passes it on to everyone they know, then this becomes a voluntary form of a worm.
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:11 pm
Sage, from one anti-virus vendor site here (Click on 'Great E-Mail Tip'):
Great E-Mail Tip! Description This claims that it can keep a virus from accessing the address book of an infected user's address book and sending itself to other users. It instructs email recipients to create a contact in their email address book with the name, !0000. Variants of this hoax instruct email recipients to use 0000 or AAAA. This does not do as it claims and Trend Micro recommends that customers delete emails similar to this.
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Sage
Member
07-20-2000
| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 11:45 pm
Thanks Bob and Dra. I had a feeling it wasn't really legit, and figured a knowledgable person, such as the 2 of you are, would be able to tell me. I'll pass this info on to my Dad. 
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 10:25 pm
Jumping jehosaphat!!! Disclaimer: Okay, I never read the directions, and have spent next to no time playing around with it... BUT, am I the only person in America with a CD writer who didn't know you can format a CD-RW and use it just like a huge floppy? I just discovered that today by accident, when I went back to look more closely at something I popped up by accident yesterday. I have Nero Express as my CD-burning software, and it came with something called InCD, which I haven't looked into. Yesterday InCD popped up and asked if I wanted to format a CD-RW so that it will act like a giant floppy disk. Well, duh!!! wouldn't anybody, if that were possible? So today I brought that screen back up and said Yes, and we were off to formatting business. And I ended up with a CD-RW that acts just like a floppy disk!!!!!! I can drag and drop stuff right onto it without using the CD writer! Isn't that JUST amazing!!!?? It only seems to work in my CD-burner CD drive though, not my other CD reader drive. Which means I could not share a CD with someone else who does not have a CD rewriter?
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Bob2112
Member
06-12-2002
| Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 10:33 pm
<...snicker...Dawg said, "huge floppy"...>
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Bob2112
Member
06-12-2002
| Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 10:38 pm
Dawg: When you use a CD-R that way, you usually have to "close off" the CD before it can be read by other CR-ROMs. Once you close it off, you usually can not write any more data to it, so it's a bit of a catch-22. On my systems I get a message when ejecting the CD-R that asks if I want to close the disk. If I click "No", I can not read it in my CD-ROM drive. When I finally click "Yes", I can read it from the CD-ROM drive. I've just started trying Nero for burning CDs, but I don't know what you need to do to have it close the CD-R. Update: I'm googling a little and found that Windows XP comes with its own built in CD buring software, so that is how it is working for me. I'll read a bit more and see what I can find. Update 2: DOH! Your using a CD-RW. My comments are for CD-R. The CD-RW may be a little different. I never use then since CD-Rs are almost free if you watch the sales and rebates.
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Draheid
Moderator
09-09-2001
| Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 10:56 pm
The primary difference between using CD-R and/or CD-RW is the 'RW' is almost exactly like a floppy in that you can erase and start over. CD-R you can NOT erase, only add to the content until the disc is full. I use CD-RW discs to burn episodes of TV shows I download to then watch them on my DVD player. When I finish watching, I simply erase the CD-RW and record another program on it. This isn't possible with CD-R discs. The ability to read either type of disc in a CD-ROM or CD/DVD player requires that you 'close' the session and finalize the disc. Once this is done on a CD-R, that's the end of it's recording. CD-RW you can still erase and reuse. I have several CD-RWs that I have probably reused at least 20-30 times. Just my 
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