Ok so I'm technologically retarded but here's my problem. I live in a house and I'm using a wireless router. When one connection in the house stops working, we reset the router. This causes the previously non working connection to connect, but then another one stops working. For reference we have four computers connected wirelessly (is that even a word?) and an Xbox connected by an Ethernet cord. Is there too much trying to connect at once? Sorry if this is too broad, I'm just no good with this stuff. Thanks
Have a look at your router. Somewhere there'll be a plate that tells you the brand and model information. Tell us those things and we might be able to help. If you have a shitty router, it might be a load problem. But four wireless connections and a single wired connection shouldn't overburden most modern kit - so more information is required.
My mum's PC wouldn't boot this morning saying that a file in "windows/system32/config/system" was missing or corrupt. I was able to fix the problem by running a chkdsk /p. My question is does this mean her hard drive is on the decline, and if so, how much longer do you think it has?
Maybe. It could also just be disk corruption from incorrect shutdown or malware. If you can hear a whirring or clicking noise coming from the harddrive while it's spinning, stop using it immediately unless it's for backing up your data onto more stable media. If you're comfortable pulling shit apart, disconnect the harddrive, seal it in a zip lock bag with tape over the seal and keep it in the freezer for a few days and recover the data using an external disk enclosure or Sata/IDE to USB adapter on another computer. If you can't hear a whirring or clicking noise coming from the harddrive - we're just guessing. But new internal harddrives are pretty cheap.
You can also use a utility like PassMark DiskCheckup or a similar SMART monitoring utility to see if your drive is behaving badly. Most drives now are SMART capable and it monitors a whole lot of parameters that could indicate bad drives. It's not foolproof and not all failures have bad SMART parameters leading up to them, but it's a good place to start. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm</a> Keep your stuff backed up. No matter if you have a problem or don't. If the drive had failed this morning, it wouldn't have been a big deal, right? Because you just install a new drive, restore your most recent backup and keep chugging? Hard drives fail. Keep backups. Make them automated so you don't have to think about them. Services like Backblaze are great for this.
Yes. Keep your shit backed up. And remember, it's not properly backed up until you've successfully recovered your files from a backup. Case in point, yesterday. Get a call from my Dad that his windows VM is all fucked up and that there are disk problems. Joy. He only uses the VM for his accounting software for him and the family business. There's a TON of shit there. He's across the country, so it's a PITA trying to deal with this shit. I ask him if he's got it backed up, and he says "yep, using Mac's Time Machine". Coolio... so go recover that Parallels image file called _______. An hour later."Uhhhh.... seems that file wasn't included in the backup." Great. Luckily my brother-in-law is a serious geek and showed up after work to look at the computer, and it was a windows trojan that was popping up a windows 7 looking alert box in winxp about disk problems. A quick scan and it was all fixed. He also set him up with a proper snapshot checkpoint in Parallels and included it in the backup periodically. Lucky, in this case, but lesson learned, and heart attack averted. Still, you'd be amazed at the number of professional Oracle clients I'd get calls from where they'd have backup problems. Specifically recovery problems. "We've been doing these backups for almost 2 years, but now that something broke, we can't seem to recover our database... can you help us?" "Have you ever tested your backups?" "No" "Then probably not."
It's also not properly backed up if the backup is in the same machine as the original copy [and most would argue its not backed up if its in the same room / building / etc]
I'm sure we could go on and on about backup recovery planning and risk analysis and such for hours, but really, an external USB drive hanging off the end of the computer is miles ahead of what most people don't have. For my Dad, I got him to get 2 3TB drives from Costco; he does his backup daily, then every Sunday when the family gets together for dinner, he swaps drives with the brother-in-law. Simple, week-old, offsite backups.
I think it's earlier in this thread, or at least elsewhere in the Tech Board, that someone posted a link to <a class="postlink" href="http://www.backblaze.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">www.backblaze.com</a> which seems to be working well so far for me for backup.
I own an Acer Aspire M1100 desktop and the computer has a Card Reader. It reads SD cards, but not SDHC. Does anyone know of a reliable website where I might be able to find a driver or something to update the Reader? I've contacted Acer directly, but they haven't gotten back to me and Google is just sending me in circles. I'm just trying to figure out if upgrading the Reader is even possible.
You won't be able to. Older SD card readers will not read SDHC cards. Source You can get a USB SDHC adapter, though. Linky
Looking to purchase a cooling pad for my laptop and wondered if anyone had any suggestions. It's a 13 inch Dell XPS M1330, so it should fit decently on most commercially available mats I've seen.
Just got a HP 4530s laptop through work and am having a hard time getting the fingerprint sensor to work. IT took a look at it and offered to look at it when they can, but I need it for work. So...despite the fact that IT looked at the comp for 20 minutes and wasn't able to enable the sensor, does anyone have an idea of where to start? The driver and software are all installed correctly, or at least Windows says they are
Ok I have a computer that can't seem to connect to the internet via browser window no matter what I do. It can connect to the domain and access network folders no problem, I can successfully ping websites such as google or espn, but I can't activate Windows or download Windows updates. I thought rebuilding the computer and starting over from scratch would solve the problem, but it's still there. It has to be a hardware issue at this point, right? Any ideas?
Tell us the details: What's the OS. You've re-installed? With what source? What domain is it connecting to? Is it configured to look for a local update server on your network rather than use MS's site? Personally, I'd go to the MS site and download/install the latest Update Agent, see if that works.
XP Pro SP2 (before I rebuilt the system it had XP Pro SP3) Reinstalled from a Windows CD It's connecting to my domain at work It's not configured to look for an update server I installed the latest update agent (from a flash drive) onto the computer but it didn't seem to help. I've also tried the following, based on info I was able to glean from google: Manually set my DNS servers used the netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt command tried to open up a telnet session to google on port 80 (failed)
I thought you said you could connect to Google, etc., it was just Windows you couldn't get to? Personally, I'd go and download SP3 onto some other media, and then apply it to the system. Then try this: <a class="postlink" href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943144/en-us" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943144/en-us</a> What router do you have? Your router could be compromised, much like DCC's was a while ago. The way around that is to set your DNS manually, rather than use the dynamic value provided by your firewall/router. Also, be sure that you're gateway and netmask are set properly as well.
Sorry, I'll clarify. I can't browse to any website; I just get the "page cannot be displayed" error. There are no proxy settings and the pages that are attempting to load are in fact the pages I'm attempting to browse to. In addition to that, I'm unable to activate Windows; I get an error stating that Windows couldn't establish a connection to their activation service. However I can successfully ping any website I try, and as far as I can tell it's not a DNS issue. The computer is a workstation computer connecting to my company's network. No other computer at work has this problem, including computers with of the same brand and model, so I doubt it's my router. I also went to the manufacturer's website (from another computer, obviously) and downloaded and installed the latest driver for the nic, and according to the device manager it's working fine. I'll try those list of commands tomorrow morning when I get to the office.
If you can ping the web sites, it's not the NIC or other network settings. If you're using IE, try installing Firefox. Or go into IE and ensure that the language default is set to English... sometimes there was no language selected and it caused problems. Again, I'd download SP3 from another machine and then patch the problematic one before fucking around with anything else.