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Tech Help (Beyond This Forum)

stuneville said:
A few months ago, my laptop (Toshiba, XP, four years old, 256 ram but none the worse for it) started running very slowly, taking ages to load on startup and falling over frequently. So, I reformatted the HD, re-downloaded service pack 2 etc, limited startup progs to anti virus, firewall, Spybot tea-timer and essential Toshiba and Windows stuff only.. and lo and behold it's running even slower than before the re-format. Especially after SP3 was installed (it now takes anything up to ten minutes to load fully, and then remains very sluggish.) Any suggestions? Is it just due to Windows now taking up so much space it can't breathe, and if so is there anything I can do about it? I'm loath to start making hardware changes as until a few months ago it breezed along.
Click to expand...

It might be worth your while running PC Decrapifier, but I suspect that an investment in more RAM will make a big difference. Do you have any Adobe products installed? They're a bugger for hogging resources on startup, and things might improve if you remove any Adobe processes that are trying to run at startup (Adobe updater etc).
 
Thanks, Arthur. I ran Decrapifier, which turned up a couple of old trial-wares that had been skulking. Otherwise, as I said startup is all essential stuff, and I'm pretty meticulous about keeping it clean, the reg in good order and defragged - so perhaps more RAM is the answer.

Time to visit crucial.com...
 
Just had another Windows update. It came with the usual message that I could continue working while updates installed, but in fact there was odd screen activity, and at one point a Tetris game I was playing refused to respond to the keyboard! :shock:

However, now I've restarted the machine, the sluggishness is gone, and all seems back to normal.

Maybe MS found a wee bug in SP3....? :roll:
 
Ok,

Am i the only one who has major problems making the BBC's embedded videos play in Firefox. If i open an internet explorer - thru a firefox add-on - they play very well with little time buffering. I can get 5secs every couple of mins through firefox.

Explanations?
 
The BBC has recently changed to its own flash-based player and it's causing no end of problems for people; personally, I've found that watching and listening to BBC content through RealPlayer is an agreeable solution ;)
 
Oh dear, i've killed the FTMB in Firefox (am posting from I.E.).

Umm, no idea, except for the fact that firefox just updated NoScript.

I can't log in. When i click on the 'log in to check your messages' link it redirects to the front board page i was clicking from.

Is this just me?
 
theyithian said:
Oh dear, i've killed the FTMB in Firefox (am posting from I.E.).

Umm, no idea, except for the fact that firefox just updated NoScript.

I can't log in. When i click on the 'log in to check your messages' link it redirects to the front board page i was clicking from.

Is this just me?
Click to expand...
If it is something to do with 'no script' then right click on the page and allow the various FTMB scripts. You probably don't need to allow the advertising stuff.

Otherwise, it's clear your cookies, check 'Cookie Exceptions' to see if anything's set as it shouldn't be and start again.
 
You weren't wrong. Thank you. Still not sure what changed. Have just disabled the add-on for the time being.
 
Does anybody know of a good C compiler that is free and works with Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Edition.
 
Have you tried the Microsoft free ones? Not sure iof they still do them though.

Anyway any gotchas for installing a second SATA drive? Haven't done a drive installation for a while - is SATA less hassle to install than IDE?
 
lupinwick said:
Anyway any gotchas for installing a second SATA drive? Haven't done a drive installation for a while - is SATA less hassle to install than IDE?
Click to expand...
One cautionary note Lupinwick. If you've got an Nvidia graphics card, beware of their SATA drivers!
Use the good old MS standard ones. I accidently clicked the wrong box on an Nvidia driver upgrade a while ago and ended up with all sorts of hard drive problems before it occurred to me to check to see if the drivers had been altered. Sure enough, the Nvidia drivers were bing used and a quick Google revealed the true horror of my mistake :(
 
river_styx said:
Does anybody know of a good C compiler that is free and works with Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Edition.
Click to expand...

I've had a quick look and found Open Watcom: -

NOTE: If you run Open Watcom on Windows Vista, you need to download the help viewer to access the on-line help files.
Click to expand...
 
Not a computer issue, but certainly 'tech'.

I have an mp3 player. A Cowon D2 - it's outstanding (in case you were wondering :))

Anyway, it has 16gb 'inbuilt' memory and the capacity to be expanded using SDHC cards - so, to date, another 32gb. I basically know nothing about these things, except for the fact that there's one in the digital camera that i was given and it seems fully-integrated, inasmuch as i don't have to 'do' anything to use it.

Questions: I had assumed that any memory i added to my D2 would operate similarly and simply act as another 'folder' to be browsed, but then i read a thread elsewhere, in which someone was discussing loading their card with music and then putting it in the mp3. player to read the tracks. This made me wonder, am i likely to need a reader/writer for the SDHC card, or should i just be able to stick it in and then send music via USB onto it?

I could probably solve all this were it not for the fact that all my documentation is in Korean...

Any advice appreciated.

edit: also. I note there are three classes of SDHC card 2/4/6 - am i likely to find much difference?
 
I don't know anything about that model, but I'd be very surprised if you need a seperate reader to load the cards. You should be able to access that storage by plugging the mp3 player into the pc with a usb cable, as you say.
Someone who has a card reader integrated into their pc might just prefer to do it that way rather than muck about with usb cables - that's how I do it with my digital camera SD card and laptop even though I could connect the camera and pc with a usb cable.

/edit/ those ratings are for maximum read/write speed .... you might notice you can write to the faster ones a bit ... er faster, depending on your hardware, but it shouldn't make any difference to your playback in the player.
 
Well, typing my question gave me a brainwave and i've experimented:

Have put the 256kb SD card from my camera in the mp3 player (i say that, it's a multimedia thingy) and i can browse through the photo-viewer to the card and view the photos. On connecting via USB though, no folder for the card is visible...

edit: victory! It appears as a separate drive.
So, outstanding questions:
a) I know the class = speed, but should this be much of an issue. The 32gb cards i found were all category 4.
b) What's the cheapest i can get a 32gb card?
 
It probably mangles it all into one apparent volume for ease of use?
 
_Lizard23_ said:
/edit/ those ratings are for maximum read/write speed .... you might notice you can write to the faster ones a bit ... er faster, depending on your hardware, but it shouldn't make any difference to your playback in the player.
Click to expand...

Thank you. 8)

Thought it would affect playback. I was wondering as I hoped to dump some films on this for long journeys. Also, i'm guessing that USB speeds will inhibit any advantage from top-class cards.. Right?
 
_Lizard23_ said:
It probably mangles it all into one apparent volume for ease of use?
Click to expand...

Apparently not. I would have preferred that if it had. It actually appears as a separate storage device. I was confused as it looked identical to having my camera plugged in - which i often do - when in fact i had the D2 (which was appearing as a device) and it was housing the cameras SD card. Curious, but fine. Am searching now for cheap cards, but have the same old dilemma of which country Korea/UK to buy in... It's often pretty close in cost.
 
Ah fair enough ..... makes sense, the player is acting like a usb card reader when it's plugged in then, with every card a seperate drive.

The speed issue depends on the player and stuff ... if it can write at 6 rated card speed it should write a 6 rated card faster ... if it writes at 2 then putting a 'better' card in won't make any difference .... like writing a CDR. If you have an old pc with usb 1.0 or something then that's going to make it slooooow anyway. Might be worth trying to find some English documentation to find out though - I imagine it can take a while to transfer 32 gig at one go whatever?

I'm afraid I've no idea about prices or best places to buy any more ,,, in fact I barely know what I'm talking about at all - I'm retired ;)
 
The 32gb card work out gloriously. It's great to be able to wander around with 4000 or so tracks and 20+ films. My 6hr road-mission from the ski-resort (as a passenger) was alleviated with Lawrence of Arabia and the Deer Hunter (not quite time, but i've seen them both before).

Anyway, today's problem. I have an old DVD rip of Lost in Translation and my girlfriend's friend wants to see it. She speaks only a little English. Does anyone know where i can download a Korean subtitle file?
 
theyithian said:
Anyway, today's problem. I have an old DVD rip of Lost in Translation and my girlfriend's friend wants to see it. She speaks only a little English. Does anyone know where i can download a Korean subtitle file?
Click to expand...

Sorry, the DVD's title and the situation (she speaks only a little English) made me smile with its irony. :)
 
Good isn't it!

Right - the matter at hand - the board is doing exceedingly odd things and i'd like an explanation. Instead of the normal page:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/

I am posting through:
http://www2.forteantimes.com/forum/

I seemed to have been redirected there. Now that's odd, but it gets better.
About 10mins ago i was looking at a very, very old version of the board thru waybackmachine (or whatever it's called), then when i came to look at the board again, a few minutes later, on calling up the latest new posts from a still open current version of the board, i was given all the latest posts and threads through the old colour-scheme. What's going on? Am i drifting into the past?

Evidence:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y45/yithian/Look.jpg

edited: image too big, click to travel in time.
 
I've been both browsing and posting through www2.forteantimes.com for a while now and apart from a pop-up which firefox prevents me seeing, nothing seems to be any different. As for the board behaving a bit oddly today, hopefully it'll sort itself out by tomorrow.
 
But the colours; the colours...
 
Yep, switched to www2.forteantimes.com when we changed hosting companies - apart from the altered url should all be the same as before.

As for today... All the Dennis sites went down. Hopefully should be ok again now, but let me know if problems persist.

Apologies for the confusion.
 
Does anybody know if a cheap but decent USB wireless adaptor that will work within a range of 15 to 20 feet and is compatible with the BT Home Hub?

I'm looking at spending £15 to £30 and it's primary use will be for connecting to the interweb downstairs.
 
I just tried to post a new story in Strange Crimes, but I got this:

General Error

Could not insert new word matches
Click to expand...

Of course, if the Posting widget is f*cked up, I won't be able to post this either... :?


Edit: Well, that posted OK - now to try Strange Crimes again...
 
I just got this error message again.

This time, I think I have a handle on it. I was posting about the Japanese Sho in the Word of the Day thread, and quoted a Wikipedia article about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8D

But the article uses characters that I think do not exist in basic ASCII, so perhaps this is the root of the problem. If so, it's an annoying limitation,and it can lead to duplicate posts when the poster tries to post again, not realising that a version of his post has actually made it onto FTMB.

This little problem should be passed on to the technical bods.
 
The problem is probably caused by the japanese "double byte" character within the text.
 
As I was running out of space on my desktop PC, I decided to salvage the HD from my old desktop - 30gb would come in handy. Changed the existing PC's HD jumpers to master, changed the salvaged one to slave, slotted it in the middle plug on the IDE ribbon... and lo and behold the PC booted into Windows 98 (the PC runs XP SP3.) Took it out, changed both to CS, tried again - same result. Went into the second drive via Win98 and looked at My Computer - no mention of the primary hard drive (I'm guessing that's cos it's NTFS and the old one is FAT32.) Changed primary back to master and salvaged to slave - went into BIOS on start up, picked primary.. and sod all happened. Just sat there blinking at me.

Anyone got any ideas? Ideally I'd just format the salvaged one, but the old PC motherboard died completely, and I've no other means of doing this than via my present desktop...
 
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