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PC/Windows Troubleshooting

Discussion in 'Technical Board' started by Nettdata, Dec 1, 2009.

  1. dubyu tee eff

    dubyu tee eff
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    Thinks he has a chance with Christina Hendricks...

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    I'm having sort of an odd issue. Running Windows 7. Every once in a while I keep getting a system message saying "This device can perform faster connected to a USB2.0 port." This happen even when I've got nothing connected to the laptop, not even the power chord. It does seem to come up more when I plug my laptop into my TV (through HDMI) so I think it is somehow related to that. There is even an option when the message comes up to uncheck a box to not have that message display again, but even though I've unchecked it numerous times, it still comes up. It's not a big deal, just sort of a nuisance factor. I thought I'd take a shot and see if anyone knows what is going on or has experienced anything similar.
     
  2. McNulty

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    I haven't browsed the technical boards too often, so I know this is a really late response, but...

    That message sometimes comes up due to a bug in Windows Update. Try rolling back your USB driver and see if it fixes the issue.

    To do this, go to your Device Manager and look for the USB 2.0 Controller. There should be a driver tab and an option to roll it back. Give it a shot.
     
  3. poor tom

    poor tom
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    So I just reformatted my desktop with xp pro and installed the drivers that came on the disk. Afterward I installed the driver/utility for my wireless usb adapter and plugged it in. Now I can see all the networks in range and I can connect to my network but when I open my browser it says it can't display the page and if I try to go to a website I get a message saying "Internet Explorer could not open the search page." Anyway, I'm not sure if this problem is coming from xp or my router but seeing as how all my other computers can use the internet I'm guessing its xp. Any ideas as to how to fix this?
     
  4. rexmundi

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    Go to start menu, then hit the "run" its on the bottom. In the box that comes up press cmd and hit enter. if will start a black terminal. Then hit "ipconfig". Paste the output into this thread. Then enter "ping <a class="postlink" href="http://www.google.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">www.google.com</a>" paste that. From there we should be able to narrow down the problem.
     
  5. Dyson004

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    I was wondering if anyone could help me out. I've got an Asus EEE PC netbook that is on the fritz. The netbook powers up and recommends that Windows 7 repair damage. I attempt to get Windows 7 to repair the damage and the netbook powers off. I get the feeling I'm going to need to try and repair it from the installation DVD, but I'm waiting on an external DVD drive. Any ideas as to what failed on my netbook?
     
  6. rexmundi

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    Welcome to the world of a registry based os. Sometimes they get fucked and wont ever work right again, no matter what your try. Assuming its not a hardware issue... just reformat the drive and try again. Or since its a netbook... install a linux netbook specific os.
     
  7. Trakiel

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    Call me Caitlyn. Got any cake?

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    I have yet another issue that I need help with, so I'm turning to you fine and knowledgable gentlemen for guidance. Google was not fruitful.

    I just gave a user a new workstation with Windows 7 Enterprise (32 bit) to replace her old computer, which was running XP Pro. One of the programs we use is hosted offsite and accessed through Citrix. I installed the Citrix client and it tested fine, but when the user tries to run it it acts as if it isn't there. Low and behold the client app does not show up in her Add/Remove program list; however when I log in (as the domain admin) it shows up on mine. I'm guessing this is a permission issue, but as I said, I was unable to Google an answer. Anyone have any advice?
     
  8. thabucmaster

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    Log in as the Domain Admin, and uninstall Citrix. While still logged in as Domain Admin, set the user to be a local admin of the workstation. Log in as the user, and install Citrix. Verify that the installation is successful, and that she's able to access the hosted application.

    Log back in as the Domain Admin, and remove her from the local admin group. Log back in with her account, and test again. I've seen this happen with Citrix a few times, and it can drive you up a wall.
     
  9. Trakiel

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    Call me Caitlyn. Got any cake?

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    This is exactly what I ended up doing. I'm still holding out hope that a different solution can be found; one that doesn't require me to give admin rights - even temporality - to every user who logs onto the machine because it's a pain in the ass, especially for shared workstations.
     
  10. thabucmaster

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    Have you thought about deploying the application through Active Directory? You should be able to create an MSI installation package, add that to a new GPO, and apply that GPO to the OU's where the computers reside. That way it uses the system account to install the package, which always has admin rights. On top of that, it streamlines the rollout and minimizes the amount of time you need to spend working on this.

    I couldn't find any KB articles on Citrix's website, but here's an article that explains fairly well on how to do it.
     
  11. Trakiel

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    This looks like a good idea; I already have the client as an MSI package anyway so that part's already done. So if I understand you correctly, this solution would get around the problem of the client not installing for all users because whenever a new user would log into that workstation for the first time the GPO would see that the client isn't installed for that user and then use the system account to install it, correct?
     
  12. thabucmaster

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    This solution would get around the problem of the client not installing properly for users that don't have admin rights on their computer. This is because GPO's use the local system account to install MSI packages. That account has admin rights on the machine and as soon as a GPO is applied to either an OU or an individual workstation, and you run a GPUpdate /force on that machine, it will request a reboot and the package will be installed even before any users log in.

    I would try to assign the GPO to a single computer in the way that I initially laid it out for you and have multiple users log in to see if the installation is successful. I think having it install under a system account will alleviate any issues you were having originally.
     
  13. AlmostGaunt

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    Hi, this question is for the gamers in the house. I am running an aging gaming PC (quad core processor, dual radeon HD4800s, 6gb of ram, etc) and Windows 7 64bit. Even though I bought it a couple of years back, this should still be plenty powerful enough. However, with certain games (currently Fear 3, and Duke Nukem Forever), the menu screens and video cut-scenes stutter hugely. The actual game-play is fine, smoother than JT's dance moves, but the menu screen chugs brutally, and in games where the cut-scenes are critical to the plot, this is a huge pain in the ass. I tried updating my graphics drivers, my DirectX, and my C++ distributable, to no visible result. I have googled the living shit out of this (albeit while somewhat intoxicated) and I can't find a fix that works.

    Any ideas?
     
  14. rexmundi

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    Have you tried to play around with the vertical sync and triple buffering settings? Also for kicks try to turn the number of pre-rendered frames to 0.
     
  15. Rush-O-Matic

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    I need a new desktop computer at my office. I have been reluctant to upgrade for a couple reasons: the one I have works. Like, really well. But, also, I have some software that I don't want to, or can't reinstall. Either I don't have the old installation discs or it takes forEVER to get it back installed and customized.

    It's been several years since I tried to clone a drive or something similar. Can somebody recommend a cloning software that is either cheap or free, and will allow me to do this? And, can somebody recommend a website I can read up on doing this easily? I don't even know if cloning is even an option, so I'd like to read up on my own to not try and ask here or elsewhere a thousand questions.

    I have a 240 GB hard drive that is about 1/3 used, 1GB RAM, and and AMD Athlon XP (2.16 GHz) processor with Windows XP. I would like to keep running XP, but I realize that may be hard to do on a new machine.
     
  16. Binary

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    I would generally not recommend cloning a drive over to a dissimilar set of hardware.

    Frequently, I have seen long term instability, slowdowns or quirkiness in the machine's behavior that is difficult to correct. Every once in a while it goes fine but the odds are not in favor of a smooth transition.

    There are software packages specifically made for doing this (Acronis has a package that will aid in transitioning to the new hardware during the image process) but I have not had much better results from that. I usually only do it if there is some urgent need to move to a new hardware box, then long-term I plan to rebuild the box from scratch.
     
  17. joule_thief

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    I agree with Binary about it not being a good idea for two different types of machine, but I have used this software to clone drives in the past and it has worked well for me.

    http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php
     
  18. MrPrime

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    Question about RAID array expansions

    But first, quick back story

    Upgraded from a Asus mobo with a intel E8400 CPU with a RAID to a new asus mobo with i5 2500k processor

    With the old raid drives plugged in, i was set to format and rebuild the raid, but (miraculously?) the new mobo/cpu booted to the old copy of windows.

    The next series of events goes like this
    1) Install windows on the SSD
    2) Add 4th 1TB drive to the raid via the intel controller (this worked perfectly fine)
    a) Raid is a 1Tb right now, and has 3 "partitions" (Old Windows/Old Data/un-partitioned)
    3) Try to expand raid, but it will not expand past the 1.7 TB range
    a) The space is there, but windows will not let me expand it to the full 2.7 Tb of space it should give


    What I Want to know, does anyone have an idea why I cannot get the raid/windows to expand to the full size?
     
  19. Binary

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    I'm not sure why Windows isn't letting you do it, but you could try a third party utility like GParted:

    <a class="postlink" href="http://gparted.sourceforge.net/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://gparted.sourceforge.net/</a>

    You can burn a boot disc and see if it'll let you expand the partition.
     
  20. 6PPC

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    I had a few USB thumb drives that had accumulated a lot of old data on them which I did not need anymore. I decided to format and re-label them all. That worked fine, but now whenever I plug in one of the thumb drives into the USB port on my PC, I get a "Driver could not be loaded" error and the drive letter never shows up on Windows Explorer.

    Was there a device driver on the thumb drive which got wiped out when I formatted the drive? Of so, how can I fix this? These were no-name USB drives. Don't know who made them or where to download drivers for them. Someone must make a generic driver that can be used, no?

    Thanks!