Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

Lost me already! How do I wind back to pre-SP1? Especially without a running windows system? What are Knoppix and DS Linux (was that a joke name or does it really exist?)

knoppix? nope, free as a bird. 700M download though (knoppix.org) hence ed's suggestion of Damn Small (which is only(!) 50M from here: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ )

andy

I don't really want advice, I just wanted to vent.

now help with my CPU thing.

www.dabs.com AMD Athlon XP 2600+ specs say:
> Max Operating Temperature 85 °C

so 60'C seems ok. various overclocker websites have suggested better cooling systems though. and make sure the thermal compound between the chip and the heatsink is spread evenly.

So I have no clue what's wrong, but thanks to AppleCare I'm not too worried. What I am worried, though, is that it will take a week or so to set up, and there are some files I'd like to have during that time (like, say, my resume!). Is there any way to use my roommate's iBook to access my iBook's harddrive? (I don't think I had "allow networked login" set up, grrrr.)

Thanks!

then attach a fw cable to both your computers and your hard drive will appear on roomie's desktop. don't forget to eject it before you shut down though! (shut down your computer by pressing the power button)

xpost Sweet! I thought there was a way! OK, hopefully she'll get home soon.

"could not find server address. If your internet connection is up, this might be a problém with your name resolution service. please try again later"

Airport Extreme is the new version of Airport, and it's the same as 802.11g (from what I can tell). The Airport Extreme base station is $199 - 249 depending on whether you get the modem and antenna port; since you can get other 802.11g routers for as low as $100, you may want to check that shit out instead.

If you've got the basic version of Airport (ie no Extreme) then you probably have 802.11b on your notebook, so getting the Extreme or 11g version of the wireless router won't be all that important unless you're planning to upgrade your notebook down the road. Since cable and DSL connections are already slower than even the 802.11b (basic Airport) setup, you're not going to be gaining anything by overspending here. And getting an 802.11b router may be a bit cheaper than 11g...but probably not by much.

thanks, btw!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00007KDVJ/qid=1084399427/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl23/103-9923206-1101432?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005854B/qid=1084399475/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl23/103-9923206-1101432?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

I saw a D-Link access point (b, not g) at my local supermarket for $40 (after rebate) or maybe it was $30?

The Internet <--> cable or DSL modem <--> optional: router <--> your computer

If you're plugging your computer directly into your modem, you don't have a router. If you have a box with multiple Ethernet ports on it between your modem and your computer, you probably have a router.

The new DSL/cable broadband sharing routers are great because it logs onto the net for you (especially if you have DSL connection that requires PPPoE authentication, because it means you don't have to use that dumb and unreliable software client that DSL providers stick you with) and then uses network address translation to change your IP #s in your inner network. This means that people can't waltz directly into your computer from the outside world, they have to hack a bit first (this one is especially true if you're on a cable modem connection, where a direct connection of your computer into your modem might well result in your computer showing up in the networks of other people plugged into cable modems in your neighborhood).

When I try and unpack dmg files of games and stuff, I get a failure message that says "invalid checksum". What does that mean?

Plus out of the box, 'It just works' functionality.

Sadly you've denied me the pleasure of giving you useless advice.

But the most troubling thing is that Zonealarm has alerted me that Explorer and WMPlayer is trying to access the internet, and once, some program called abetterinternet.com or somesuch tried to connect to the internet, too. I'll have to run adaware/spyware blaster, but what in heck is going on??

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/11/21/maintenance.html

However, I noticed that Windows Media Player is running in the background, which seems to be in middle of things. Is it usually supposed to do that?

For each example, I would like to enter the Last Trade value into a certain cell in Excel. This has to be done once a week at the end of the week. There is an example here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ate.

The html code for each Last Trade value seems to be the same i.e. for this example:

<td class="yfnc_tablehead1" width="48%">Last Trade:</td><td class="yfnc_tabledata1"><big><b>17.43</b></big></td>

all of the yahoo finance web pages I need to input data from also have the same kind of format i.e. the URL mentioned above with just the code at the end (after the equals sign) changing. Also, the spreadsheet entry will involve entering the Last trade value into columns B through to BE each week, and for each of these columns the contents of row 2 corresponds to the value after the equals sign in the URL.

Please help!

i'd write a script that used wget or curl to get the html pages, sucked out and chopped up the relevant line using perl or sed or grep, wrote the output as comma separated file which i could then import into excel. how you'd do this using windows is left as an exercise for the reader. (cygwin? activestate perl?)

wrote a little something in php (because it's portable and easy enough to install) and sent it to your hotmail account. don't know how useful it'll be as i've no idea what formats excel will import but it should make it a little easier.

andy

cheers.

mark, i had another thought about your thing last night. instead of lots of individual pages can't you set up a yahoo portfolio that contains all the prices for the companies you're interested in? this would just mean downloading one page (let their database do the collating of info) but would mean the parsing of the file to extract the price you wanted is a bit more complicated. or maybe there are too many companies.

(ah, windows update probably means you're running windows.
My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Virtual Memory is where you change it on win2k systems. typically this should be about twice your RAM. we have a 3G partition here at work that we use for nothing but the page file)

I think my hardware is fucked somehow. I've got another computer (that I'm writing this on) but would love to get back into it to retrieve info etc. (300 rare Wu-tang songs!)

Thanks to anyone kind and clever.

The drive works fine on my Mac at work, so I don't think it's a problem with the drive itself. It must be a windows problem. It's just odd that I can't seem to find anyone else who has had this issue.

Should I be worried? Is this a bad sign of something? I repair permissions and run MacJanitor regularly.

Just to be clear, you DON'T have the iPod plugged in at the same time while you're doing this, right? If you do, unplug dat shit, reboot and then try this all again.

Seriously, though, I don't have any clue why it would be doing that either. You could try updating the driver (both using the windows driver update using the properties of the drive, and by going to LaCie).

Also, another clarification on the Disk Management: use the bottom window, not the top window. The top window, if I remember correctly, only lists drives that are okay. If that LaCie is having difficulties, you'll have to locate it on the bottom half of the window, and it may be grey'd out.

Glad it's working now!

Same story. This is very very very frustrating and I'm about to hurl my PC out the window. If someone has any ideas, they could save me hundreds of pounds worth of damage and a cold night in my bedroom. Thanks!

FIREFOX

This has been going on since I reloaded Windows XP. I really need to check my emails, please help! Pretty please?

http://www.dynebolic.org/

I've downloaded this image and it boots fine on my laptop/other PCs

If I create a mount point /mnt/net and run

mount -t smbfs -o username=,password= //192.168.0.5/sharename /mnt/net

I get an error wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.0.5/sharename, or too many mounted file systems

The same commmand to the same share works fine on my Fedora box.

I can ping the ip address fine and web appears to work.

If I run modprobe smbfs it exits with no error, so I'm assumng the smbfs module is loaded okay.

I'm a linux newbie, any ideas?

I get an error wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.0.5/sharename, or too many mounted file systems

Just remind me why Linux is better than Windows again?

use 'lsmod' to see loaded modules. (/sbin/lsmod)

> Just remind me why Linux is better than Windows again?

do you know the history of the samba project mark? it's a) interesting and b) a good example of why linux is 'better' than windows.

This does not sound good.

module Size Used by
smbfs 36920 0

Freej etc preloaded all on a bootable cd.

anyway:
http://www.myjavaserver.com/exec/.Gdm5KtpKLwzNf2CZvwBFfNjLDwyZnxzT9vB1j3BM1JBPfwBMuwBVHwp0f2y
seems to say that more samba software is required

and this http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/2003-June/041463.html says that there's just a symlink missing

Maybe Dynebolic is shite, are there any other boot cds designed for media work like this?

HAHAHAHHAHA

list of distros and packages here: http://linux-sound.org/distro.html
* AGNULA a GNU/Linux audio and multimedia distribution
* APODIO is an "...audio computer on a live CD bootable distribution"
* AudioSlack audio packages for Slackware users, from Luke Yelavich, inspired by PlanetCCRMA
* Demudi the Debian Multimedia Distribution (merged with AGNULA)
* Dynebolic a GNU/Linux distribution "... shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and teachers"
* LAW is the Linux Audio Workstation distro from Jacob Robbins
* Linux Music Apps CD a great collection from John Littler
* Low-latency RPMs packages from Udo Jocher that include a 2.4.18 kernel patched for low-latency and preemptive operation
* Medialinux at OSL a Knoppix-based Linux distribution focused on multimedia
* Planet CCRMA At Home RPM packages of the Linux sound and music software used at CCRMA, thanks to Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano
* Thac's RPMs For Mandrake includes a large collection of Linux music and sound packages
* Turn-Key Linux Audio a new Linux audio distro from Kevin Ernste at the Eastman Computer Music Center

but none of the ones i had a look at had freej.

(i've been reading the dynebolic pages and other people do have samba working, albeit in older versions. maybe they just forgot a couple of files. should be easy enough to copy them over from somewhere else (famous last words...). try 'locate smbfs' see if that can find it.)

I tried d/ling the Google toolbar for the new version of FF (0.9) for XP, and there were some reported issues re: getting the damn thing to work - you had to close your browser after d/ling, then deactivate the extension, close AGAIN, activate it, close AGAIN, and then it would be available the next time you opened FF.

Stupid me, I inadvertently downloaded the Google toolbar extension in such a way that I ended up with TWO instances of it in my List Of Extensions, and when I shut down the browser & restarted, a little dialog box called INSTALLING DOWNLOADED EXTENSION (or something like that) popped up. And now I can't get Firefox to open! I click on the wee li'l icon, & that stupid little box shows up, and I can't do dick.

I tried uninstalling / reinstalling - no go. I can reinstall 0.8 just fine, but when I reinstally 0.9, I get the same booshit. I imagine I have to seek out whatever the hell's in my profile directory referring to the Google toolbar. I checked out where the extensions are located in the Mozilla directory, but the files / directories are named something like {9dka-doiw822-adakjj}. Help?

ALSO: where the hell can I snag a copy of Doom II? My sis wants me to burn a copy for my nephew's 6th birthday.

Dynebolic also comes with LinNeighbourhood a Linux app with a GUI like Network Neighbourhood I can see the Windows PC in there but not any of the shares.

"The Samba filesharing daemon is running on your dyne:bolic: everything contained in the /home/shared directory is accessible (read and write) as a shared folder on the network you are connected, without any password protection - the share is called 'dyne:bolic casbah'."

/etc/samba is viewable here:
http://cvs.dyne.org/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/initrd_tree/etc/samba/

/etc/samba/smb.conf has the share as 'public'

/etc/samba/smbusers:
root = administrator admin
nobody = guest pcguest smbguest

I'm a total linux newb.

This is sooooo frustrating

and there's always ftp 8)

home network doesn't have dhcp server running so i had to give dynebolic box a static ip and after that the shares just appeared in the linneighbourhood box and everything was fine. (open an xterm and 'ping {ipaddress}' to see if it can see the windows box. 'ifconfig' should also give you info about eth0)

work network picked up ip address straight off but i had trouble seeing the shares. i set the proper workgroup in linneighbourhood preferences menu and rescanned and that found the shares, no problem. i may have needed to 'browse as user' though, i can't remember. later attempts to connect to other shares failed, i don't know why. i'll reboot and try again after lunch.

But they don't seem to sell them anymore! This is surely ridiculous? Some resellers (like Jigsaw) still seem to be, but they cost more than the Extreme ones. Is this because they've been discontinued? Why on earth would Apple do that?

Yes it is but for an eMac you'd need a usb one

I ordered my Airport card from Jigsaw24 today. They still had some.

hmmm these look good.... maybe I'll get two

Bytecc ME-320F
Speeze Cooler 3.5" USB 2.0 / IEEE1394 External Drive Enclosure, Model "FI320"

Can I use this to get fast internet access somehow? How?

(Mootar) morons.
(Mootar) these people who live in my apartment complex are connected to my wireless
(Mootar) they must think they're super-cool hackers by breaking into my completely unsecure network
(Mootar) unfortunatly, the connection works both ways
(Mootar) long story short, they now have loads of horse porn on their computer

Sorry Jon, I don't know what that means.

Under Network Preferences, I discover I do indeed have an Airport IP address that is different to the one from my dialup connection.

try to setup airport to get a DHCP address and then bring it up again

Ha, I've got a laptop question for anyone kind enough to help out. I got my editing studio set up last night with my PC laptop (Cubase, Reason, external hard drive, no problems).
However, I've got some studio monitors with XLR and 1/4" outs and no cable. Do I just need to get an adapter to plug them into the 1/8" headphone jack of my laptop, and is this the best way to do things? I wasn't going to buy an external sound card because I'm just planning on doing editing, not recording, on this setup. I just want to make sure the 1/8" laptop connection will be okay for quality/power.

I'm computer-retarded btw.

http://web.mit.edu/is/services/network/dhcp/wireless/macos10.3.html

has a bit telling you how to set it to DHCP

When I open Internet Connect and switch to Airport, I get 'Status: Status not available' at the bottom, instead of the 'Connected to blah blah', send/receive bars and IP address reading that I get with Internal Modem.

what EXACTLY happens when you click on belkin54g from the pulldown airport menu?

there should be no other configuring necessary.

downloads are running at only about 2.3 kbps, which is bleeding slower than when I was on dial-up. Anyone got any ideas (apart from running a cable the length of the house)

1. change the name from "linksys" or "netgear"
2. turn off SSID broadcast
3. enable WEP
4. enable MAC filtering
5. password protect router from generic ADMIN password

if you have a WRT54G you can install better firmware from sveasoft.com which will boost your signal, give you bandwidth management options, and a multitude of other cool shit.

The speeds are cracking at the moment, which is good, we just have to leave the box out of the cupboard.

1) your firewall (if you have one) may be interfering
2) their firewall (if they have one) may be interfering
3) their connection speed (if they have one) may be much much slower, especially if they are on 56k, isdn, or DSL. (DSL upload speed is usually much slower than download)
4) HA HA YOU EFFED IT UP

Incorrect. It IS coming out for the Mac.

I have a new one now, an oldie but goodie - why do I only get, at most, 2.5 hours of battery time from my powerbook battery when it is fully charged?

What does this mean?

Bluetooth on new superduper powerbook 15" (running panther) no longer works - says no bluetooth hardware attached, which is odd, cos it was built in.

Any ideas?

These email addresses were all taken from people who registered in the past two months, so hopefully they should be pretty up-to-date. There might be some fake ones in there though.

Batteries become less effective over time. Li Ion and Li Polymer are generally about 50% less effective after 2 years and pretty much dead after three.

I remember there was some files in it that looked corrupted after I used it with a windows me so I think that was it.

I think I'll ask a data recovery guy to look at it this afternoon. Even if they can't do anything it turns out I'm pretty zen about it all.
It would be sweet if I could spare myself that (between 200 and 500$)expense , anyone got a tip by any chance, diagnostic tool or ?

Some do bounce them at the server - it depends how they're configured. Some servers will bounce mail that has nothing in the To: field, because of spammers using the BCC: field to send an email to hundreds of addresses at once (as described above).

At my last job, we had a (legit) mailing list with a couple of thousand addresses on it, and would receive a couple of hundred bounces on each run, from out-of-date addresses, full mailboxes, and so on. To send, though, we used a simple Perl script I wrote to generate a separate email for each recipient and pause a few seconds between each one; it avoided overloading our mailserver.

I am filling in a LOT of application forms at the moment (just under 60) - a great majority of them come in .pdf form. of course this means that I have to print these off and fill them in by hand instead of my usual cut & paste technique. is there any way that I can 'edit' .pdf files i.e. so I can fill these forms in electronically?

I have no idea why you are filling out 60 application forms. That seems like a poor strategy to me. Concentrate on maybe a dozen that you really want, and are best suited to. But that do I know?

I have a Photoshop file I'm making on this printerless computer. Some of the layers use the type tool. If I take it to print on another Photoshop-equipped computer that doesn't have the font I have used installed, will it still be OK?

I didn't flatten it and it was OK - it just came up with a message saying that the text on that layer wouldn't be editable, as the font wasn't installed. I ended up switching it to another font on that machine anyway, because the of the second problem, which turned out to be that because I had started from an image that I'd got off the web, with low resolution - this low-res of course affected everything else that I added to it. D'oh!

i set it to dial on internet connect and left it for a second... when i came back the screen was all black and full of scrolling text, talking about some sort of "switchback error"! i restarted and things seem fine but WTF?

Another workaround is to save the file as a PDF and print from the other machine using Acrobat Reader or similar program. DO NOT open the file in Photoshop or you will be forced to rasterise it (Making the text a bitmap graphic rather than a vector).

hh:mm:ss:ff

to get something to the nearest hour

for those that don't know ff is frames and for PAL there are 25 frames per second.

best i can find

The problem now is that iTunes doesn't know what happened to the mp3s. If I try to play something, it says "The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" If I click yes, I can show it that's on the new hard drive. And then it'll play.

But is there a way to avoid doing this for every individual song on my computer?

I got the idea that perhaps something had overheated, so I turned the computer off for forty minutes, and restarted it again. Since then, everything's worked fine, although I haven't been doing any kind of serious work with my computer.

Dell is sending me a new hard drive (I'm under warranty) ... so it'll be a pain in the ass to reinstall everything, but whatever. Now, assuming that the overheating is the problem, will it be solved with a new hard drive? What's stopping the next hard drive from overheating too? I removed the hard drive and examined it -- nothing appeared scratched or damaged at all. Is the real problem something else?

Your opinions would be appreciated!

Mechanical parts (such as fans or motors) -- those are the sorts of things which break down at a moment's notice.

When you replace it try to clean out any dust from vents, etc. (Or from anywhere.)

like:

http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/English.lproj/GPGMail.html

yes, so much nicer than the routine beatings fathers usually hand out

my housemate has told me about this after her mum read bout it in the paper, but she doesnt know anythiong about computers

is it a scam? how could it work?

Soon after I fitted the card and got everything working so that I was on the internet the computer turned itself off - no warnings, just 'clunk' and it was off. Up on restarting it, it got stuck in a loop of getting to the point where the blue XP 'welcome' screen appears and then restarting again and again and again from the same point. after a while it started up fine and said it had recorvered from a serious error. Everything worked noramlly until I shut it down. when I started it up again, it got stuck in the same loop.

This happened a few times until last night when it restarted, got through all the dos stuff and now keeps hanging prior to the Windows XP screen (with the orange blobs scrolling left to right to make it look like it is loading).

I'm guessing this is pretty serious but is there anything I can do to sort this out other than taking it in to be repaired?

Have you tried booting into saafe mode?

How do I allow established FTP connections the ports needed for passive FTP access without allowing everyone access to those ports?

Or am I going about this the wrong way?

I haven't tried the safe mode option. Assuming I can get it to start in safe mode, what should I be doing to make it better?

CD Burners. I have an internal burner and an external burner. Neither is working.. But it seems to be Windows Xp that's the problem (surprise surprise.)

Here're the symptoms:
-Internal writer - when looking in Explorer (file browser) at the supposedly blank media in the drive, it shows a folder from a CD I burned about 4 months ago.

-When I put a CDR in the external burner, Explorer shows the contents of the last CD that was in the drive.

So I can't write a Cd because Windows (via Nero or Burn at Once) thinks the CD in the drive is not blank. But I keep putting new CDRs in, and they all seem to have the contents of the last successful read. (If I put a different audio CD in the drive, then Explorer shows its contents for every blank CDR I put in.)

I have tried rebooting, reinstalling the drives, restore points, ....

Any other ideas why it's doing this and/or how to fix it?

Copy that path into the location bar of Internet Explorer (which is just another way of dealing with windows explorer), truncate the file name so it's just the path: f:\unsorted\albumname\ There are all the files. go up a directory: can't find the directory albumname.

WHAT THE FUCK????

try searching for "windows xp files hidden not showing up" and you get the standard bullshit about viewing hidden system files which isn't what I'm trying to do.

I'm worried this might be a drive problem. It also doesn't seem to be consistent. For instance, it happened to some stuff I downloaded two days ago, but not yesterday, but it happened today. No rhyme or reason.

Is it formatted NTFS or FAT32?

I'm at my mom's house and her computer runs S L O W. It's windows 98, and she has never run the defragging program as far as I can tell, nor done a system cleanup. So I decided to defragment it, left it defragmenting overnight, and it is still only partway done. It will work on it for a short while, then a message comes up that says "new drive information: restarting" or something similar, and it has to go through the whole reading-the-driver thing again, working through already-defragged areas, then each time only defragging a few more lines before starting the process over. I've got it paused right now.

Things I have done to try to make it go faster and not restart:
stopped norton utilities from running in the background
shut off the screen saver
shut off the monitor's (and anything else's) idle auto-shut-off
deleted cookies and any spyware I found (i.e. ran the disk cleanup thing)
I even unplugged the phone cord (we are on dialup) even though I know that should do nothing.

Anyway, I'm an idiot about these things, and if anything else is running in the background, and updating the files every few minutes to cause this restarting, I don't know how to find it. And I don't want the total defragging to take, like, DAYS at this rate. So, help please?

If you have tons of directories/files, go to the directory you're losing the files/directories in, choose the "view" option from the menu bar on top of the window, go to "arrange icons by..." and then choose "name". I'm willing to bet if the directory is there, it's just not in the right alphabetical location, or is maybe off to the side of the window or something. It seems like a stupid answer to the question, but I've been burned by this multiple times.

As for the Win98 defragging issue, beanz OTM: the Win98 defragger fucking sucks, because if anything is running in the background at all, it messes with the defrag. Give up before you tear your hair out.

If you're connecting it to your system with an IDE cable straight to the motherboard, you may be running into an issue with the system not seeing all of the files, if you've gone over about 137 gigabytes...sometimes the controller on the motherboard isn't set up for drives over that size. After that amount of data, performance might get flaky. (If the drive is pre-formatted before you put it into the system, Windows will probably report 200GB but may not know what to do with the last 63 or so gigs, reliably, when it's writing to the drive.)

If it's a serial ATA drive or an external drive, this doesn't apply.

I have a SMART failure thing detection thing on my hard disc, after the BIOS screen, before windows begins to start up.

I was backing-up everything to reformat the drive and reinstall windows, anyway. I did so, hoping the detection thing would just go away but it has not.

is a failure inevitable? is there no way to fix/stop it? should I just replace the disc straight away? the only reason I have not already got a new disc is that it is a laptop and a new 80Gb drive will be almost £100.

thanks.

http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

That will give you SMART information, is your laptop still in warranty?

but 1st off make sure any irreplacable docs are backed up ASAP.

05 / Reallocated Sector Count / 50 / 1 / 1 / 1022 / Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is being predicted

any idea what this means?

I have everything backed-up to an external disc and, also, to DVDs.

it is just under a year into its two year warranty.

problem is...I have a ton of work, at the moment and up until june, and cannot risk sudden problems or waiting for "repairs". I wish I could just buy a new disc and they would compensate me.

thank you.

Depending on your warranty type they will probably want the whole laptop back, and if you replace the disk yourself you could invalidate your current warranty in someway (breaking a sticker or something)

Give them a call and ask them what the warranty procedure involves for a knackered HDD.

I have had the warning for about four or five days, now, but it is still running fine, at the moment.

I had hoped there would be a way to just format and completely and reset any probs.

oh, well!

thanks, again.

It's a good idea to get it sorted whilst the laptop is in the warranty period.

I cannot afford to send it away, for repairs, though.

I have, just recently, formatted and reinstalled windows--the only space used is by windows and a couple of applications and drivers--I have no files on it, now.

so, say, less than 3Gb used.

(go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management - Disk Manager is in the tree under the Storage node)

(unless you use a non-destructive partitioning program like Partition Magic, of course)

Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management

If it does, you should be able to assign a drive letter to it here. I don't follow why you would need to use a special program to recover data from the disk... It should still be there.

I need to compare two folders and delete from the first folder everything that also exists in the second folder. I can't find a flag in rsync for doing this it's not really what it's for. Any ideas anyone?

cd to second folder
find . -printf "rm -i /firstfolder/%P\n"

pipe this to a file then run the file (can do this in one go but i always check the output just in case). will delete everything in first folder that has the same name as that in the second folder

will give you a list of common(ly named) files

in any case, i would recommend getting into the bios settings at bootup and see if the computer sees the drive on that level, before even getting into windows

also are the jumpers on the drives set correctly for their positions on the ide channels? (is the slave drive set to slave or auto)

1) write the list of commands in a file
2) put this at the top:

#!/bin/bash

or, more generically, "#!" followed by the path to the shell you want to use.

(-d stops rsync recursing)

xpost

> How do I turn a list of commands into a shell script?

you don't need to, really. just

sh file_full_of_commands

btw chmod +x file_full_of_commands makes it executable

does the copying with no intermediate file.
the {} token in rsync command will expand to the found directory.

I lost the data by converting the disk from Dynamic to Basic - I had it all backed up though so no problem. Have assigned a letter to it and will be using it purely for sharing media. Thanks to Caitlin and Keef for the help here.

Any ideas?

Unplug the mouse, login and plug it in again.

No PS/2, tried unplugging it but Cursor remains frozen in middle of screen.

I have also had to relearn the harsh lesson that the solution to almost all windows problems is to reinstall the OS.

can I chain my ipod through the back of the lacie via the second firewire port?

As for the exclamation marks, what you need to do is "touch" all the songs in the library so that iTunes checks them out. There's an applescript to do it, but I can't find it from work. I'm sure I've got it at home, so give me a yell if you need it. What might also work is "consolidate library" from the Advanced menu, even though it has nothing to actually move.

If all that fails, select all the songs in the library (Apple-A) then get info (Apple-I). Put "Stet is topp" or something in the comment box, and click OK. Then wait. And wait. It'll go through each track in the lib, and should hopefully sort it out.

(do yours or Mark's computer have networking? If all else fails, you can connect two computers together using a "null modem" cable and make a copy of your files that way. A null modem cable plugs into the serial port of each computer and should only get a few quid; but check what connectors your computers have before you get one, because serial port connectors can be either 9-pin or 25-pin.)

I've got most of the important stuff (eg latest thesis draft) backed up via emailed copies, although at this point I know there are misc. documents still on there that I refer to maybe once a month and haven't backed up, also lots of photos, and I should really transfer everything if possible. Fingers crossed it will turn on again long enough to transfer everything. It will pain me to lose photoshop though. (The CD for it is somewhere in storage in the US.)

Follow the guide from microsoft and get your files over ASAP and then stop creating new files on your laptop.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304040

The hardisk will die at some point in the future, so you will need to buy and fit/have fitted a replacement hdd, if I was doing this I would buy a new disk now and using adapters on a standard PC ghost (make an exact copy, using Norton Ghost) your old drive onto the new one while it was still working this would be seamless, you may find a computer shop willing to do this for you. If not you'll need to resinstall Windows and all your applications onto your new HDD.

Pash, pour water on it.

The point is that most people don't have a single internet connection in their house. So they need something that can give ethernet, which everything speaks.

(Ed is right here. Quibbling about different varieties of ?DSL is neither here nor there, because your average off-the-shelf DSL modem supports all of them. The hard part is finding out what settings your ISP hasn't told you)

I hate iPhoto, sorry but it sucks. anyway, I have got myself into a right pickle. i was trying to show my dad flickr and see if i could upload some of his photos onto it. anyway hes got 3000 or so photos in his iPhoto Library, and iPhoto was being difficult, and seemed to have crashed, so I used Force Quit. the one that says "you may lose any unsaved data".

so the next day i get a phone call and it turns out that all his photos hvae "disappeared". when i next am home, i look high and low for the missing photos but cant find em. not in the trash, not in any hidden folders or something. all thats left is photos left in other folders outside fo the iPhoto Library folder.

so what does this mean? iPhoto ate my photos? where coudl they have gone? what happens to data when it just is "lost"? is there any hope of using data recovery software to get it back? it seems hard to get such software for the mac, and i wasnt sure whether it would work. is there anything i can do?

im not sure how much more detail i can give, especailly as i am not using that computer at the moment.

thanks in advance for saving me from my dads wrath!

also: windows has a neat little feature where you can restore the machine back to a certain date. like the day before all the photos disappeared. im not sure if mac has something similiar.

find / -name '*.jpg' | less

it should list every .jpg file on the entire system. You'll have a lot of trawling to do to find any of the ones that you're looking for, but if they're still on your computer they'll be somewhere in the list.

If the worst possible thing has happened and iPhoto either won't open your library or there are photos missing, they are probably still in the library, stored by year, month and day. Navigate through the various folders and copy them back out. When you copy a photo out of the database, use option-drag to make a new copy so that the original is left behind. All of the metadata is history at this point, but you at least have your photos. If the photos are actually not there, then there has been some serious disk issue that you should address immediately."

http://girr.org/mac_stuff/photos.html

Restore points don't get your data back they just roll back the system software to a point before you installed that dodgy driver or piece of spyware. You have to set them manually as well, it's not a backup.

As for Ambrose's problem, not sure what to suggest as far as recovering the photos which should be in the iPhoto Library. As for the slowdown, it's a known problem, especially on older systems, due to on the fly thumbnail creation.

Some tips on speeding up iPhoto.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030204061957714
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050212014121749&query=iphoto+speed

This implies you might need a specific BRAND or something of DSL (or dialup or cable) modem with yr ISP which just isnt right. Not for dialup or DSL anyway. The exception being ADSL vs DSL2 - DSL2 does need a DSL modem capable of it and older ones wont be.

Current set-up:
AMD Athlon Processor 1.14 ghz.
256mb of RAM.
Radeon 7200 graphics card 64mb

What should I upgrade in order for GTA: SA to work well on my pc? Which should I made priority? I've seen 256mb graphics cards ranging from £55 to £150 on Amazon, am I an idiot or are these similar products?

The min spec for GTA:SA is 1GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon or equivalent, RAM: 256 MB RAM, Video Memory: 64 MB VRAM and the recommended spec is Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP or equivalent, RAM: 384 MB RAM, Video Memory: 128 MB VRAM.

Also, how easy is it to upgrade these three elements? Would I be best taking it to a proper pc shop to get sorted or can it be done at home with ease?

If you have to upgrade the motherboard too, you're essentially looking at stripping down and rebuilding the entire machine. It's usually less work to buy a new computer and put your old hard disk in it.

Take a look at these guides

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200506.ars/2

The budget box but with 1GB of RAM is a nice machine, keep in mind that budget means budget gaming here, the video card isn't the best around but it will run GTA:SA very nicely at 1024x768, but as the system is PCI-E you can slot in what video card you want later on or even a better one now depending on how much you want to spend.

based on this incredibly handy list:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/67909965/m/844003222631

BEar in mind the videocards at the top of that list are able to run Battlefield 2 at very high resolutions and quality settings.

You could keep your current HDD and optical drives, you might want a new case/power supply though modern systems tend to use a bit more juice than older ones and run a bit warmer so a few case fans are needed.

Really how powerful a videocard you need is based on what resolution you need which depends on the monitor you use.

Bear in mind minimum specs are the minimum to just get the game running they never really give any guide to a spec for a smooth gaming experience, the recomended specs are where you should be looking.

Don't buy from a local computer shop, unless you are supplying the parts list and they offer a reasonable quote for the work/parts.

Seriously 3200+ and 6600GT with no monitor for 1500USD is too much

also, does anyone use mkisofs much? am having trouble with options - it's turning '=' signs in filenames (yes, i know...) to '_'s and generally being a pain. am using cygwin mkisofs, source is win2k, destination is linux. don't need subdirectories but filenames are at least 26 characters long and need to be preserved.

(mkisofs -J -l -R -iso-level 3 resulted in a disk full of files i could list but not access)

(google gives lots of links to manpages full of all possible options but there's too much of a wood / trees thing going on there)

To annoy.

I don't use mkisofs much, but I've just skimmed the manpage: have you tried the option -relaxed-filenames

Yeah they don't care about the bandwidth really it's the principle or something.

am writing a script to cobble together 650M of files from a directory (there are hundreds, roughly 4M each but not constant), md5sum them, mkisofs them and write them to cd because the alternative is using windows gui 'tools'. next problem, adding filesizes together...

$sum=$(( $a + $b ))

Computers are supposed to be deteministic dammit!

prompt> sh a
+ 0 + 10 ╪

um. worked fine in real bash, gave the above rubbish in cygwin bash. am using size=`eval $size + $s` instead. the thing i thought i'd have trouble with was extracting the filesize but stat -c "%s" filename to the rescue.

Is there any way to change the attribution line in replies in Mail? So that instead of saying "On 10 Aug 2005, at 11:20 pm, John Doe wrote:" it says something a little more lively? My googling has turned up nothing, but googling for "Mail" is a most unrewarding exercise.

I used to be able to do this in Eudora with a little plug-in. I kinda miss Eudora, but I've made the change and I'm going to stick with it for a while longer.

when I turn it on all that comes up on the screen is a folder with a little exclamation mark beside it, similar to the low battery sign

I have had a little look around on google and people are registering the same complaint but no-one has provided satisfactory solution

in the past whenever my ipod has failed in its many novel ways it has normally rectified itself by just being left alone

perhaps that'll work this time but in the meanwhile, any suggestions?

thanks

I'd never seen that before

I'll try disconnecting it and re-connecting it

I'm not sure it'll do any good, can I buy replacement hard drives relatively cheap?

I want every folder on the drive to have bitrate/duration/date modified/type/size and nothing more (most of my folders are mp3s so these are the best settings for me), and I've spent an age setting these up, choosing 'apply to all folders' and 'apply this template to all subfolders' but after a short while I lose them.

I've googled for answers but to no avail, I've d/ld this TweakUI program that promised to mend it. It didn't. You guys are my only hope to stop me yelling FUCKS SAKE every 3 hours or so.

HELP!

fuck you windows, and also fuck you Maxtor drives!

but I'm coming in here for you lot to confirm it

and I'm not in a good mood so don't be a twat

OK

I have just had DSL installed

I bought a hayes ADSL ethernet modem

I had been trying to run it via airport but that didn't work

so I tried the direct connection via ethernet and that didn't work

I thought I should switch to the PC and maybe see if I can configure the modem via that route and get in on the mac through the back door

I switched to the PC

I set it all up and got on the internet for a little while

the POWER & ADSL lights have been on, steady for the duration

whereas the LAN led blinks intermittently and stays off more than it blinks

this leads me to believe the problem is either in 1. the ethernet cable or the ethernet socket

so I am going to return the modem - can anyone recommend a half-decent mac-compatible (i.e. with fkn decent mac documentation) ADSL modem I can use, preferably in conjunction with airport?

PS I am only on the internet now via the PC using the shitty USB speedtouch modem that demon gave me, which crashes my mac each time I use it

not in a good mood at all

: /

Are you sure it isn't just the cable?

and I'm not in a good mood so don't be a twat

Ungrateful!

I hate those modems that you configure through browsers : /

I'll try another cable then

if that doesn't work I'll return it and try a linksys, ta stet

markelby, please

airport can be such a fanny

*Most* ethernet hardware that doesn't have separate link and activity lamps will have a lamp that stays on for "link up, idle" and blinks rapidly for "link active". Slow blinking sounds like an error indication.

If you can, test it with the shortest cable you have that has moulded-on plugs - that's your best bet for cable-reliability.

(I've just spent three days sorting out the Ethernet cabling to an office. On all the cables, the link claims to be up but magically fails to transmit packets - but only when the cable is fitted in the last 5m or so of duct. If you pull it out, leave the cables dangling out of the wall in the next corridor and test it then, it works FINE. I hate hardware problems.)

thanks for the linksys tip stet

: )

(I'm intrigued)

I think it was the ethernet link

whether it was the hayes box or the cable

I don't know

I just replaced it with the linksys

and voila

I found messing about with computers, at that level, very stressful though

god knows how IT techs. cope

Anyway, is there any utility to check my FW ports? Or somesuch?

how do I best

1. test the speeds I'm getting

&

2. fix it so it's faster, because I know my speeds are too slow

(I was downloading tricky's mix on ILM earlier and only getting speeds of 5/6 kbps, when I'm on 2meg broadband)

?

2. God, I wish I knew. There are all sorts of voodoo things you can do with packet sizes and the like, but they have a negligble effect from what I can tell. If you're only get 5k/s on the speedtest tho, it's probably time to call yr provider

downstream 280 Kbps (35.0 KB/sec) 302 Kbps (inc. overheads)
upstream 211 Kbps (26.4 KB/sec) 227 Kbps (inc. overheads)

rubbish!

I am phoning my provider

if you boot into openfirmware and enter "printenv" that shows you all the stuff in there. LOTS of little things, and some of them do control how the booting progresses

- I got the Tiger 'let's fail to recognise the lower memory slot' problem.

- I got the Tiger 'let's fail to wake the display from sleep when the lid has been closed.

- I got the Tiger 'let's have a kernal trap when we turn Airport on/off'.

PRAM zapped and reset, PMU reset, RAM tested and still the problem remains. Think it might be a dodgy airport connection, but it's a grade A pain whatever it is.

:*/

wall jack -> linksys ADSL modem -> airport

network settings: TCP/IP using DCHP
modem settings: PPPoA (even though it should be PPPoE? or even bridged?)
airport settings: configure TCP/IP using ethernet using DHCP

I guess the ISP is running the DHCP server?

Er, did that make sense?

the modem keeps hanging too but that's a separate (really fkn annoying) issue

I think I know what's going on but I have one last (for now) question

I'm running a wireless network through airport: one mac, one PC

the mac is always on, but the PC goes on and off

I've no evidence (I've not tested) but I think the PC being rebooted / re-initialised is causing the modem to hang - and my connection is lost

is this possible?

and also if this was the case, shouldn't the modem just reconnect to the adsl (I have a linksys modem set to "keep alive", with a redial period I've now changed to 3mins instead of the prev. 1min) since the mac is still on?

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7035
Date: 9/5/2005
Time: 4:53:49 PM
User: MUSIC\RH
Computer: MUSIC
Description:
The soylentgreen service was successfully sent a start control.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

is this possible?

I don't know if it's possible, but it used to happen to me all the time.

http://www.fullspeedahead.com/flyimage.aspx?nm=CK_Vigorelli.jpg&big=true

soylentgreen service ?!?

I suspect that the DVD-Rs were burned in a non-standard format that's only readable on the original PC. I ran into this once with some CD-Rs of mp3s. The way to double-check is to load the discs on a third computer and see what happens.

could someone tell me what should I burn on a cd, I want to make a boot disc.

http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3392849

How do I use this file to fix the avi file?

it was opened by mistake in word and now it keeps saying '[file name].xls: file format not valid'

is there any way I can either import from word or export to excel

or any other way I can fix this problem and open my spreadsheet?

Well, that's all I can think of, anyway.

changed suffic to .doc but don't know why:

tried opening again in excel '[file name].doc: file format not valid'

obviously

In which case, I give up. I've no idea what you've done to your file.

thank god it's not my file

it opens in word

both of the files, the .xls and .doc

but copy & paste... : /

oh well thanks for the ride!

I want to be able to copy and paste a link into some sort of link search engine and find blog entries, etc. on such

I don't think google can do this can it?

When you select the spreadsheety table in Word and then try 'Paste Special' in Excel, does it give you a variety of options?

x-post. yes, Google can do this, hang on a sec.

for example.

You use the link: operator then the web address you're interested in. I always think Google is a bit stingy on results.

thanks for the help with the .xls but we've given up on it

opening it in word originally lost 90% of the original document, so any recovery work was essentially futile by then

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.freakytrigger.co.uk&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

Far more hits, perhaps because it also finds sites that link to pages deeper into FT than the level you specify too?

basically, slsk has stopping downloading/uploading anything in my queue. searches dont return anything. this started when i was on cable with NTL. I clicked the test router configuration thing in options, and it told me that the router wasnt configured properly and advised me to go to a port forwading FAQ page.

so, as far i as know, i didnt have a router really, just an external cable modem. anyway, now im on a wi-fi network, and i get the same thing, but again i dont have a router, so what is the problem? as far as i can tell, i have:

a computer (doh)

should read:
a computer (doh)

a computer (doh) < PCI network card < Apple airport base station < Webstar cable modem < hole in the wall to the rest of the magic

so, none of this is a router, right? whats not configured then? someone on one of these weird ghostly tech forums mentioned that the modem should do port forwarding automatically. someone else mentioned that it must be a software related problem, or a firewall or ISP blocking the port. but this is a situation where midway through using 1 ISP it kinda stopped working, then using another (now on telewest) it still doesnt work.

argh i feel so stupid and i know its only to evilly steal music so who gives a fuck but i want to download dj supreme and strike u sure do etc. what is happening? any port in a storm, so any help is welcome! thanx!

god i am so dumb. 5 year olds understand this shit, and 2 degrees havent equipped me with the knowhow to work this stuff out.

i have to follow the lines along flowcharts etc.

when i read, i mouth the words to myself*

*ok this is only true when reading foreign stuff.

who is the network uh 'admin'? is it someone on a mac? maybe they can access the airport and set it up according to the website

1) If I stay connected to the internet for more than five or so minutes, the whole computer crashes and locks. This occurs even if I just leave the connection sitting there ignored, but not if I'm careful to disconnect before it happens and then reconnect later each time I connect, coming to an aggregrate time of way over five minutes. I've tried it with a different ISP and the same thing happens.

2) If I try and install my soundcard, the computer locks, kaput.

Is there any hope at this point that this is anything other than a hardware problem? And if so what bit do I need to replace?

"guys, i can connect to your wireless network from my flat. do you want me to set up the security on your router?"

at least, don't say this unless you're willing to spend an hour on a sunday afternoon tooling around helplessly after you manage to FUCK THEIR ROUTER COMPLETELY so nobody can connect to it AT ALL. shit.

luckily i managed to a) fix it and b) make it secure. and c) set up an iBook and a flaky-as-fuck vaio to connect to it. given i know arse all about windows PCs, i consider this a grate triumph.

still. bah, computers, etc.

next week we're having a bring-your-own-laptop party at syxties. complete with candles.

So this weekend I'm throwing a party in a pub. I want to plug my laptop into their projector and run a PowerPoint thing we've made, on a loop all evening. So far, so simple - just buy the appropriate lead and all's well, right?

But.

The projector is bolted to the (very high) ceiling and completely non-accessible. And it's permanently plumbed into a VCR on a different floor, with all the relevant leads (just SCART, as far as I can see)actually painted into the fittings, if you see what I mean.

My question:

If I only have access to the end of a SCART lead which is currently plugged into the aforementioned VCR, can I "simply" create a lead which has a monitor plug at one end and a "male" SCART plug at the other?

Or do I absolutely have to somehow access the monitor socket on the projector?

We're fucked without the projection...

HELP!

my laptop has this socket:

http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/FBEguide/Computing/Projector/Copy%20of%20laptop_back_close.jpg

so i need lead with a plug that will fit in to that socket at one end, and in to this -

http://www.cybermarket.co.uk/ishop/images/923/756.378.jpg

- at the other.

yes, I mean *into* this as opposed to, er, just *being* this - as I said, i have no other way of attaching anything to the projector.

the key quesion here is of compatibility: are laptops SCART compatible, in principle?

i'm hoping there's such thing as an rgb-to-scart converter, then i'm sorted.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136811&page=1&pp=15
http://www.idiots.org.uk/vga_rgb_scart/

Sorry :(

http://www.nexusuk.org/projects/vga2scart/circuit

One you can buy:

http://www.macwarehouse.co.uk/catalogue/item/STARMK10?speedtrapid=mwfroogle&lead=mwfroogle

I've not done any research, so y'know take with grain of salt kind of thing.

xpost

what's vga?

(i only need this once, for a one-off event, so i'm not splashing out over 50 quid. thanks anyway, ed)

in fact, i've discovered that a simpler solution would be to convert my ppt presentation to vhs, so that's probably what i'll do. but for that, i still need some way to connect my laptop to a vcr! gaaaah.

here's a bunch that i haven't used:
http://www.videohelp.com/convert#4;13
this looks promising:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=259841
as does this:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1271288#1271288

(if only because the mention libraries i recognise - tmpgenc and ffmpeg respectively).

So we send these photos to our website guy each month. He scales the pics down each time, to about 13kb so they're usable for a website.

The first time, the photos all went up fine. The second time, all fine again. The third time, we checked the pics on the site and they were real crappy. All blocky and ugly. I mailed him and asked why. He said it was because we were taking the pictures at 72dpi. Either that, or when we were taking them off the camera, the program we used was converting them to 72dpi. Thing is, we don't use a program to take them off the camera, we just drag them off. And the settings on the camera haven't been changed ever, they're all taken at the best quality.

Plus, saying that we take them at 72dpi doesn't make sense because surely this would make the jpegs much smaller than 3mb?

So, I'm confused. Is it the camera at fault? The website admin guy says that pictures can still be taken at 72dpi and be of a large file size, but this doesn't make sense. These photos can be printed on an A3 sheet of paper and still be great quality so saying they only have 72 dots per inch sounds mighty wrong.

We sent the most recent batch of photos over and he said that when he opens them, they're 72dpi again.

Here's one of the pics: http://s49.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2BGUVE28MVREY2VZ9FOJ1DZF33

Does anyone have an explanation for what might have happened here?

> The third time, we checked the pics on the site and they were real crappy. All blocky and ugly

this sounds like either a compression problem ie they are too compressed or like he has them one size and is forcing them via img height and width in the code to be a different size.

http://home.clara.net/koogy/photos/01s.JPG = same image resized to 300x450 (75dpi, jpeg quality = 50%, filesize = 21K, done using gimp) (50% is quite low)

Thanks again for clearing that up.

ok, Java. i have a list of things (for a particle system), only some of which are currently active. i've currently got them in an array and everytime i want to draw them i go through the entire array and draw the ones where the state is ALIVE. when i need another particle i go through the array until i find one that is DEAD and re-initialise that. this strikes me as bad and i'd rather have a list of ALIVE elements and a list of DEAD elements and swapt things between the lists as the state changes. in C (i am a lot more comfortable with C) i'd malloc a bunch of space and modify pointers as required. what happens in Java? can i change pointers? can i switch things between lists (Vectors? Arrays? what) without having to recreate them? will the vm be continually deallocating and reallocating memory? how fast will it be?

(can i just say in advance: threadkilla! thanks)

I would consider using a linked list rather than an array (you could even store the linked list in state order, hence dead ones could always be at the front of the list, so you'll get O(1) performance on re-initialising dead particles).

if i use an ArrayList can i add ALIVE things to the front and DEAD things to the end? i guess so (array is fixed size (at the mo). i never need information about DEAD things so i can delete them without worrying). if i add things or delete them will that bollocks up the indexing for the rest of the list i'm iterating over? i remember vaguely having to make a copy of something because i couldn't modify it whilst iterating over it. (maybe that was j2me only.)

in C you had to write all this stuff yourself (until glib came along) but at least you then knew how it worked 8)

class ParticleWrapper {
    int id;
    Particle p;
}

with a unique id.

if i'm trundling through a list, processing the alive ones, and get to element 4 and decide it's now dead (due to aging or collision or whatever) so i mark it as such and move it to the end. but what is element 5 now? is it what used to be element 5 before i deleted #4 or is it what used to be element 6 because everything's moved up to fill the gap?

i think i need to write some tests...

I've got a 300gb C: drive (Windows XP, 1gb ram, 2.21ghz) and foolishly chose not to partition it when I first set up my PC. Now the hard drive is about half full and running r e a l slowly, so I guess I need to partition it. But how do I do it without wiping everything off my pc and starting again from scratch? Do I have to download a new program or can XP do it quickly and easily? (sorry for sounding like a st00pid newbie moron)

ed is this what i need to do?!?!

Right click on my computer
choose properties
select the advanced tab
Click on the performance 'Settings' Button
Click on the Advnanced tab
Click on the virtual memory change button
select custom size
Set the inital size and the maximum size to the same value, minimum 1.5 times installed RAM, maximum 3 times installed RAM

The memory card is inserted properly and we've tried a different card and that works fine. We've put the card back in the camera and it says 'no pictures', but we took another picture and it said '1 out of 60' so that suggests there are pictures still on there. It recognises any new pictures we take, but not the old ones.

Probably grasping at withered straws here but does anyone have a magical solution for making these pictures come back to life? It's seriously important as there were a lot of vital shots for people on there. The camera is a Canon EOS350D (similar to yours Ed, I do believe) if that's any help. Has anyone had this happen before even?

I've got the username, password and ftp details. I'm getting hold of Fireworks (for the photos) and Cuteftp to upload the photos to the ftp server. But I'm clueless as to where to begin with actually sticking this stuff up on the site.

I guess it's all there in the help file but there's so much to wade through I thought I'd try here first. Is it a simple task? (I only need to add some text to a few pages and upload some more photos to a gallery). Can anyone give a quick idiots guide on how to begin?

failing that you'll have to modify the html to include links to the new pictures.

do you have a url we could look at, to investigate a bit?

well, the next two pictures will be easy enough to add as there are already spaces for them in the table (look for [td width="90"]@nbsp;[/td]* and replace the @nbsp; with a modified copy of the line above). after that you'll need a new table row which is a bit harder (but again just a modified copy of code that's already there).

* i've changed the triangle brackets to [ and ] here and the ampersand to an @ because otherwise the ilx software will throw a wobbly. you should keep them as they were)

the actually gallery pages (the next one will be gallery13.html) can just be modified copies of the pages that already exist, updated for new pictures. ditto the http://www.clubclique.co.uk/gallery_pages_jan06/11.htm type pages. none of this is difficult as long as you're ok with editing files and uploading.

i once wrote something (www.koogy.clara.co.uk/page74/) that had a clever javascript main page and which just let you modify a simple secondary script (http://www.koogy.clara.co.uk/page74/routes.js) and upload that day's image and it'd regenerate itself on the fly. might be an idea for your site.

> Would you say it's too difficult for a complete newcomer to work out?

the tables can be messy if you nest them (yours look ok). look into simple table stuff. and, like i say, as long as you're ok with editing files and uploading then it's fine. the ftp client will typically work just like a file manager. try downloading a copy of what's already there and modifying it locally. point the browser at the local copy and edit it until it looks ok. if it messes up just download it again. rinse, repeat.

what you could do is change the a:active colour so that links don't disappear when you click on them 8)

I went back to the shop and the shop guy told me that all it means is that the BIOS needs updating, an easy enough job. I've just tried to update the BIOS now and it says 'You do not need to update BIOS'. So now I'm stumped. Have I wasted £40 on a useless bit of plastic or can I sort it out so my laptop can have 1gb of ram? Is a laptop from 2003 likely to be capable of managing 1gb of ram?