I've seen quite a bit of cabling issues for Dell's LCDs, inverters and cameras. I'd suggest removing the front bezel surrounding the screen (remove the screw covers, remove the screws, gently pull the front frame off) and seeing if the camera cable is loose or looks like it's about to break off. If it's not a hardware problem, then you could try getting new drivers or it or disabling any actively running applications that use the camera. Sometimes there's a conflict. Of course, if you don't use the camera, you can just remove the driver entirely and tell it to stop trying to install it.
I've been having a strange issue with my Microsoft Office. I asked our in-department programmer, he didn't have a solution, but I've suspected for a while that he doesn't actually know anything. Anyway, the copy I have is provided to us from our university. I downloaded off the university website (Office 2010) and installed. Now for some reason whenever I start any office program, it starts configuring Office, it fails and the program shuts down. Then I open it again and it configures again and succeeds. Then I can use the program just fine for about a day. After some uncertain amount of time, if I try to use an office product, it goes through that configure, fail, configure, succeed process again. Numerous times it has told me the program has successfully been activated, but then a day later, same issue. I've tried uninstalling, and re-installing. I even used microsoft fixit to get rid of all things connected to the software and reinstalling after that but the same issue crops up again. Anyone ever heard of this happening? What's the issue here?
The guy may well be a clueless asshole. But that's not a reasonable indicator that it's so. Development (Programming/writing code) and ops (making people's computers work) are very, very, very different skill sets. Lots of good programmers won't know shit about this sort of problem. Also, lots of IT guys who's jobs don't include ops will just shrug whenver some asshole with a problem tries to use them as free tech support. I certainly get real stupid when my coworkers have problems with their personal computers unless they're putting something on the table that makes doing them a favour worth my time. You'd be amazed how many assholes think that because you know something about computers - you're happy to work for free for acquaintances in your spare time. Your profile is fucked. A good tech support person is by far your best option. Preferably someone who does ops - not a developer. They should checkdisk/defrag and retry it - if that doesn't work, manually clean up your profile app data and local settings and check your event logs for hints and if they can't fix it that way, create a new local admin, backup the important bits of your profile, blow away your existing profile from the new account, recreate your profile and replace your data and then it should all work - but you'll lose a bunch of stuff like auto complete data and usage history (surprisingly irritating when it goes).
This might be helpful: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272227 You can also run a repair on it. I actually had to do this recently after I installed VMware workstation. Control Panel>Programs and Features>Microsoft Office 2010>Change>Repair Note: you might need the install media to run this.
I don't understand, what do you mean by "profile"? Do you mean whatever the university network uses to identify me on their system or something?
The profile in Outlook is what identifies you on the Exchange or other mail server. It actually resides on the server so you can recreate the profile without much interruption. The caveat is that you will have to add any archives (.pst files) or local contact lists to the new profile. This is old, but it explains it pretty well: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.outlookpower.com/issues/issue200609/00001854001.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.outlookpower.com/issues/issu ... 54001.html</a> This article should show you how to do it (scroll down to answers): <a class="postlink" href="http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Office_Productivity/Groupware/Outlook/Q_26810506.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.experts-exchange.com/Softwar ... 10506.html</a> Also, check and see if you can launch it in safe mode (Assuming Win7) from the search line: outlook /safe
When you open a windows computer, you log in under an account. Sometimes that process is automagical and happens inthe background, or sometimes you have to enter a username and password. On your harddrive, usually on C drive, under either Documents and Settings or Users there will be a directory structure of user names where your crap lives - application settings specific to you (your initial in word, menu order preferences, cache data, all sorts of random crap . Your my documents folder and the stuff you save on your desktop will live in the same folder tree by default. On a corporate/university network, the locations of all that crap might be changed by group policy or other scripts/preferences pushed out by the local admins. the HKCU hive physical file specific to your user account will also be stored in there. A bunch of the folders and files will be hidden by default, you need to turn on view options in Windows Explorer to see them. And fucking around can cause a bunch of unintended consequences if you don't know what you're doing. If you have a helpdesk who look after your PC - and they are in any way competent, if you call them and tell them that you think your profile is fucked because you have <symptoms> they will first check for disk problems (checkdisk, defrag), then they'll try and manually clean up your profile, then they'll nuke your profile and start again after saving your important data to restore it back to the new profile. Given the questions that you're asking - you shouldn't try and fix this yourself. Get the helpdesk to look at it, or find a geek you can bribe into helping you out.
By this point I would bet your kinda fucked and you need your box nuked. Once you start configuring, reconfiguring, uninstalling, reinstalling, and repairing on a registery OS.... its not likely to work. Is it possible to log in under a different account and then installing it? For example can you create a new user and then try it with that account? or are you locked into 1 account?
This issue is not that uncommon and is almost always isolated to either a user profile (in most cases) or a policy on the box (typical in corporate environments; they never allow the Office install to get fully configured because of security restrictions). I generally disagree with the blanket advice to nuke-and-reinstall. Sure it fixes the issue, but first of all, it's a giant pain to most users, and second, why did it work? You don't know, and when the issue rears its ugly head again, you don't know how to fix it. Unless you have your box partitioned to allow easy wipe-and-reinstalls, and you know right where to grab all of the hidden user settings, it's a pretty frustrating thing to recommend.
Listen to this. The other day my friend is going to some website on this laptop when UAC pops up asking him if he wants to install some program. He says no and then his AVG notifies him that it's stopped a program from installing. That's when the problems start - he can't open any executables except for IE. Every time he tries to open an exe he get's a popup prompting him to tell windows which program to use to open the file. Google isn't able to help because all of the solutions I found involved opening something I was unable to open, whether it was a malware remover, the registry, or even a command prompt. Even in safe mode the problem persisted. I was finally able to fix the problem by starting in safe mode with a command prompt which finally enabled me to open the registry and fix the problem; somehow his registry got fucked and I had to import a clean registry file, which fixed the problem. Once I could open executables again the first thing I did was install a malware remover and run it, which to my surprise only found 2 infections. I researched them to see what the hell they did but according to my research neither should have caused the problem, they were both just adware cookies. I've dealt with malware infections before and this was the most difficult to fix. I'm glad this didn't happen to any of my computers at work, but I'm still troubled by the seeming mysterious cause of the problem. Anyone else run into something like this?
This is kind of an odd question, but how do internet ads work? I've been getting the exact same ad for a concert here in town for the past few weeks on a bunch of different websites. How do the ad agencies figure out the music I listen to and where I live?
Tracking cookies. They tag your location by IP, since ISPs typically assign IP blocks by region - if you're in rural areas, it may be very inaccurate because a block may be shared over a geographically large area, but in metro areas it can be pretty accurate. Then you get a cookie loaded on your machine that tracks sites you visit in an attempt to pinpoint your preferences and market better to you. I believe the page has to specifically call a cookie in order to write to it, so the "tracking" is limited to sites participating in the same ad network that knows to look for and write to the cookie. So, a big ad network like Doubleclick, has ads on many types of sites. If you visit hip hop sites with Doubleclick ads, they mark that in the cookie and you'll start getting ads targeted towards hip hop.
This makes sense. When I got this computer, on the first boot-up where you go through and set up your user name, in the middle of the process I got the blue screen of death. I created a new username and manually deleted the half-created previous one. At the time I was desperate for my personal PC so I decided to ignore the problem until summer break. It seems that is the problem (and there are some other strange issues with this computer such as the fact that I cannot set the computer to hibernate because I get the blue screen of death every time I bring it out of hibernation). Given these issues, I think it makes the most sense to just reformat the hard drive over the summer when I'll have some free time to tinker. If that doesn't work, then the computer is still only a couple of months old and so still under warranty. Thanks for the help.
The blue screen of deaths are a probably unrelated issue. And usually wouldn't be profile related. If you have any kind of SOE provided by your school - or if you have any kind of microsoft domain in place that you joined your laptop too, then whoever does the level 1 support for the SOE/Domain should be able to fix this for you in half an hour tops. The level one guys who work for me nuke profiles as a trouble shooting step right after asking users to log out and log back on (geeks, stop frothing, we build our group policies so it's a pretty low impact thing for our users). Any big corporate microsoft support environment will have profile problems regularly. there really isn't any reason to rebuild your PC if you have tech support available too you. The BSOD's could be a bunch of things, from firmware to power settings to a bad windows install or just a dodgy hardware build. I would make a point to follow up on that while still under warranty. I have previously seen bad memory batches, bad CPU batches and bad HD batches responsible for BSOD on wake from hibernate. All of which are needlessly expensive to replace yourself if you can get it done under warranty. And while it's a low impact issue, it usually signals a shorter life expectancy for your hardware in general. But it might however be a bunch of less serious stuff - so getting a techie to look at it or trying a nuke and rebuild is probably worth the hassle. (and if it wasn't obvious - I agree with BinaryVisions that Nuke and start over advice is usually unwarranted - it's just the easiest place to start with a recurring BSOD if you aren't comfortable reading event logs)
Would anyone be kind enough to help me locate a torrent for the documentary "Wisdom" by Andrew Zuckerman?
I have was under the impression that this is a machine that is on either a work or school based windows domain. Is this just a personal computer that you got at best buy or something that you cant get office to work on? Then asked a guy a work whats wrong?
Does anybody know of good freeware for making video slide shows with captions and a music track? Thanks for your help.
Yeah I thought I mentioned that it is a personal computer, but now there is a bigger issue, i'm getting blue screens if death everytime I turn it on except in safe mode with command prompt. I thought my best option would be to try to do a system restore through command prompt but I don't know what to type in. Help!
anyone else having issues with EZTV? i know they take it down for maintenance every once and a while, they just did it a couple days ago, but there is no notice on there site saying they took it down.