Boring computer-related question @&#$king thing.

I have disabled the device & re-enabled it. That does not work. Or do you mean something else..?

From the Start menu, choose the "Run" option. When the box pops up, type "command".

Type "ipconfig /release" and wait for it to come up with a notice that all of your IP information is 0.0.0.0.

Type "ipconfig /renew" and then hopefully it should come up with a valid IP address...if you're running a router, it'll probably start with 192.168.x.x

If this doesn't help, and rebooting does, then reboot. Rebooting cures everything.

Thanks for the tips..

we'll see...

You can walk around your neighborhood with a laptop open if you want, you might find a better signal. When I moved into my new apartment I was using the guy's airport two doors down from me to check email for about a week.

you can also download macstumbler and kismet for OS X if you want to have more fun with that sort of thing. They're free.

I don't know how to do this in OS 9.

macstumbler says:

mcn_net, channel 1, max signal 60 (my own network gives max of 101, and 80 where I'm sat now), wep NO (what is this? my own network has wep YES), vendor unknown (it knows my vendor.)

If you haven't already done so, set up your access point and computer to use WEP encryption; it's not perfect security but at least it means someone won't be jacking your signal and then using it for their nefarious purposes (or running up your bill or whatnot).

More information required. Is yours a built-in card or a PC Card? What type of computer?

we prefer the term 'silver surfers' 8)

the fan in my PC is very noisy lately. i tried cleaning it and reinforcing the screws, but no go -- it's still making kinda rattly, guttural sounds and i can't figure out where they're coming from.

http://us.st7.yimg.com/store1.yimg.com/I/directron_1830_26445729

Too bad I've got 4 hard drives.

http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/phantom.jpg

It's like a giant heatsink! I want one.

http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/products/power_supplies/ultra_quiet/silencers/S410ATX.jpg

so as it turns out, i do have a faulty power supply. last night it started giving off a noxious burning electrical smell and the computer would power on but not boot up (and it wouldn't shut off unless i switched off the PSU itself).

tech support is sending me a new one. it won't be the supadupafly ultra-quiet ultra-cool one i want (the "silencer"), but it'll work and it'll be free under my warranty.

My parents have a shiny new pc running xp and they want files from their old one, running 98se, to be transferred over. I could make lots of CDs but it might be easier to peer-network them. They've got a router-broadband-modem-thing and when they're both plugged in the win98 one can see the existence of the XP one but can't get into it, and the XP one can't see the old one at all. The old one is stuffed with malware and doesn't have the resources to introduce big new software. Is there any way I can link them up? I don't have a serial cable, just the cat5 cables so I'd like to do it through the router if possible. Am I on to a loser here?

Linking the two up over the network should be pretty straightforward. If you right-click on the C: drive on the windows 98 machine, there should be a "sharing" option. If you set the entire C drive as shared, you should be able to get to it from the WinXP machine by going into "My Network Places", I think.

I've got spybot S&D on both but the firewall keeps identifying what it thinks are trojans anyway.

I'll make sure I set the C drive as shared. Will I have to unplug from the internet to make sure the drives aren't accessible to Hostile Strangers?

If you can see the XP box from the Win98 machine, create a new folder called "dumpingground" or something like that on the C: drive of the XP box, and then share ONLY THAT FOLDER. That should allow you to get into the XP box from the 98 machine, and you can drag and drop files to that specific folder.

Another idea to try if all else fails is Filezilla - you can FTP between machines.

If the speakers, you may just be triggering some alert sound. If you go to the Sounds control panel you might be able to find the sound and figure out what's triggering it.

If the computer itself, that's more worrisome!

Turns out, my WinXP machine has a cute little dog that pops up every time you use the Search function of windows. If you leave the search window open and go back to work, eventually the dog gets bored and starts scratching himself, even if the window is buried 6 windows down below what you're working on.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q261186/

Ha, I don't know when it started - perhaps it was after I DLed Human After All...

Start -> Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sounds tab

There should be a long list in the window at the bottom of various alerts and when they are triggered.

Having said that, the Microsoft cordless mouse I have here at work is pretty nice-looking - silver and blue. I'm not sure what it would look like next to an iMac, though.

unrelated question: i have so far been unsuccessful at using a cd-rw to burn as a shared network drive. can you do this?

something as extreme looking as that should be wireless too, don't you think?

there's no chance that a nextdoor neighbor is into ham radio is there? seriously, if somebody broadcasts at a low enough frequency, i'm fairly certain just any old speaker will play the sound. i've seen this demonstrated before. generally it's pretty illegal to broadcast at that strength in that range, but it happens. a crackpot neighbor through my stereo speakers said, "testing, testing, this is the Palm Goblin... come in... oh shoot, my dials are all wrong!"

i'd imagine your problem is still some undocumented sound like that kb article somebody posted upthread. or perhaps a certain website???
m.

(try opening a few in notepad)

if you know what type of file it was, you should be able to select the file when opening from the application and most apps will at least try to open it even if the file extension isn't right.

if you don't know what file it was... you could try using something like textpad (free from textpad.com for windows)... it'll open a file in binary mode if it needs to, and it'll dump the HEX as well as the ascii text representations. then if you can conceivably figure out what the file was, you could rename it appropriately and your OS will hell the right app open the file.

many binary file types have a little text header or footer that'll identify what format it is. gif images frequently start with "GIF89" or something. doc and pdf files often indentify "microsoft word 2000" or something. quicktime files often mention that they were created by apple quicktime somewhere... etc. zips generally start with "PK"... and have lot's of file directory paths in them near the end.

if you're looking for something automagic, i'm sure there's something out there that does that. i just don't know offhand.

http://www.ericphelps.com/uncheck/

I think I'm buying an external firewire HD (LACIE 160GB PORSCHE FW EXT HD 7200RPM) for my aging Mac tomorrow. My basic plan is to just use it as a drive for my iTunes library. I have two questions though:

1. I thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to do a clean install on my machine, in the hope that it will return to something like the speed of operation I had when I bought it. My plan is just to copy over my personal files (mp3s, photos, text docs etc) to the new disk; reinstall Jaguar (10.2.0)from the original discs I got with the machine, plus the extra software I have (not very much - Photoshop and a few pieces of freeware/shareware); then run Software Update to bring things up to date. Is this a good plan, or is there a better way of doing it?

2. Should I partition the external HD? As I say, I'm planning on just using it for my iTunes Library (which takes up 30GB of my 40GB internal HD), but maybe I should also use it as place for Photoshop scratch files or something. Any ideas?

Any advice welcome.

It's not a bad idea to reinstall although not that necessary. Most of the guff will be in your user folder which you will want to copy back anyway.

As for partitioning, it's not a bad idea either, in theory you will lose less data in the event of a disc crash but discs are pretty reliable nowadays. If you use a partition for scratch, make it the first partition on the disk.

The disc might be faster than your internal one in which case you could experiment with using it as your main system disk.

What guff? I'm not really planning on copying back any systemy-type documents. Maybe the odd preferences file, but that's all.

I just like the idea of a clean slate - my Mac crashes quite regularly now, where it never used to, and had slowed down a lot even when I still had 5GB or so left free on the HD, so I figured as fresh a start as possible would be the best idea.

I have the portable 100GB Seagate drive, which is a bit more sturdy thanks to a metallic outer casing, but not 100% sure if it'll work with my iBook without external power...have been using it with the PC instead. It does come with two USB connectors, one for data and power, and the other for data only...use the Data/Power connector if your notebook sends power through the USB, use both plugs if your notebook doesn't.

I went with a lacie firewire, 160GB.

Win98 + an always-on internet connection is a bit of an iffy combination unless there's a half-decent firewall somewhere between you and the wider world.

Nah 11Mbs is well enough for any home broadband link.

However the reccomendation of an ethernet NIC and a Router is a solid one.

Upgrading from 98 to 2k/XP should be a priority though, depending on whether your PC can handle it.

I just reinstalled Windows XP on my wife's laptop, and now it has no internet connection. Using a cable modem.. Under control panel, clicking on Network Connections" ... On my computer, it has the 1394 connection and the Local Area Connection. On hers, it's just the 1394 connection. I can't figure out how to add the LAN internet connection...

fuck you, windows...

Also it says I'm about to install crap software on a super duper computer, should I be bothered?

(or, pick something that isn't SuSE - I tend to avoid it if I can)

xp

(if you can get a command prompt, and it has the 'lspci' command, that is very useful. This is partly why I *like* the Gentoo install process, because it's all done from the command prompt)

I think my laptop has died. On Sunday it wouldn't start at all, press power button and the fan kicks in/power button lights up but nothing else, a few time was able to start on the chkdsk blue screen but stopped at 25% or so. Yesterday was able to get it going and fortunately managed to transfer most of my files to an external hdd but then it went down and beeped around 10 times (bios beeps?) Since then have had no joy restarting it, much the same as Sunday.

Any ideas what it could be, seemed to be running very hot, so wonder if that's the root of the problem? Is it feasible to get fixed, is it within the ability of a relative novice who's upgraded bit's and bobs on the desktop pc byt never prized open a laptop. Would it be cheaper just to scrap it and get a new one?

Here's a question. Sgs ripped a few dozen CDs to her old laptop with Windows Media Player. She has just copied them onto her new laptop via a usb memory stick, but when she tries to play them the following error message appears:

"Windows Media Player cannot play, burn, rip, or sync the protected file because you do not have the appropriate rights."

Can anyone suggest a simple way of sorting this out so she can play them on her new laptop?

Thanks!

Could she just use a different player than Windows Media Player?

mark, that's drm for you in a nutshell. those files she ripped were tied to that computer and won't play on the new one. don't use wma in the future (mp3 is fine, flac better) or turn off the flag (it's on by default) that encrypts them.

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/7e241b1f-1019-43c1-868d-cafc718d16011033.mspx

"Can I remove DRM from a file?

No. Once DRM has been applied to a file, DRM can't be removed from it.

If you ripped a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, those files are protected. Although you can't remove DRM from those files, you can delete those files and then rip the CD again with the Copy protect music option turned off.

For more information about copy protection and ripping, see Rip music: frequently asked questions."

Fucking stupid fucking Windows fuckers.

(thanks Koogs)

Hey guys I need to convert a few .sxc files to excel.
I'm really struggling, I have no idea :/

Ahhhh, I think I've sorted it, you can download Staroffice from google :D

So you can pay $69.95 or download it for free as part of the "Google Pack".

Surely I'm missing something?????????????????????????????????????

google paid for it

lovely.

It's pretty handy you can save as .xls.

when it keeps restarting on its own and something like:

memory error detected
memory settings reset to default settings

shows up at startup, what does it mean?

Also how to remove 10 second wait for auto disk chk to start? I'm running win xp

HALP

Here's a really impossible question. Why does every graphics-intensive game I play crash back to the desktop after half an hour or so, even though I have replaced the processor, the graphics card, the motherboard, and finally the power supply? Have used a software temperature testing thing and it doesn't seem to a be a problem with overheating.

Can anyone point me to a configuring static IP (on a Mac) for dummies?

Apple Menu > System Preferences > Network.
Click yr interface (ie Ethernet or airport) in the left (if you're already on the internet, it's the one with the green dot). Change the "Configure" pop up to "Manually" and fill in the details.

(The details aren't Mac-dependent, and will depend on your network.)

Ah yes, but where do I get these details? My ISP?

Or can I just pick a number? LOL

555-5555

don't be mean harbl

Yes, your ISP should give you all those details. Most ISPs will have DHCP set on, though -- so if you know your static IP address, just choose "DHCP with manual address" and put the IP in and the ISP will handle the rest.

that's a lot of acronyms, hoo.

Thanks for this, but another question - HOW would I know my static IP address? This is for forwarding ports for torrents (Transmission).

Ah, you're setting a static IP address for your local network, not one from your ISP.

Just choose "DHCP with manual address" and then choose one on the same subnet as your router. If your router's address is 192.168.1.1, set your IP to 192.168.1.10 or something. Then you can set your router's port forwarding to forward the torrent ports to 192.168.1.10

thanks, I will try this now!

And my router's port forwarding is on the (Linksys) page thing which I need to configure with ethernet cable?

yep. be sure you're setting the right IP address though. If you usually use Airport, set the manual address you want for the Airport interface in System Preferences, and put that into the linksys.

I do use airport. I am parsing your words carefully