A thread for boring computer questions.

Or you could just use encryption and/or limit access to known MAC addresses like everyone else does.

The I386 folder most likely, because it's not guaranteed; it's just a name, but almost certainly contains the installation files for Windows. This is not the same as the windows installation itself, which will be in c:\windows\ or c:\winnt most likely. I take it you bought your PC with Windows pre-installed by a vendor such as Dell?

What it does is if you want to install some new feature of Windows that are not installed by default, it can install it from the I386 directory rather than from the Windows CD. Assuming you have a Windows CD (and a CD player), then that will suffice and you don't really need the I386 directory.

Alternatively, if you're worried about it, you could try compressing the I386 directory (right click, properties, advanced, compress files...)

I got a plotter, today, for free.

problem is, I think, the plotter's driver doesn't work with anything beyond windows 98 and I have XP.

is there a way of running a copy of 98 from inside XP?? or something??

what else could I do?

I looked online (a bit) and was told it wouldn't work.

I think I may have found a driver that will work.

how boring!!

If you can find a driver for say NT4, then there's a possibility, but even at that it's probably likely to fail.

Have fun anyway.

A "plotter" you say! Do they still exist! You'll be coming home with a drum printer and a wireless next.

I think I have found an NT-based driver that, apparently, "works very well with XP".

since I dropped & broke my external hard drive, on sunday, I have no copy of autoCAD to give it a whirl with, though!!

ta!

Either that or everyone on slsk has become a total asshole and stopped sharing, and no one is interested in my files either. The first option seems totally sensible to me, knowing people, but the second seems strange especially considering the new albums I just added.

http://chris.schleifer.net/ssX/

so much better than nicotine, or the win client

-- fe zaffe (fezaff...) (webmail), March 28th, 2005 10:31 AM. (fezaffe) (link)

Seems like I'm getting better search results than ever. Maybe it's just time to get off Nicotine.

Basically in either program (I dl'd ssX) I'm getting search results (slowly) but they're all greyed out and can't download. Now, I actually pay the $5 a month for slsk so this shouldn't be happening; I haven't used slsk in a while though, not heavily at least. But previously, like say 3 months ago when I last used it for several searches, virtually everything showed up as dl-able to me. Did they change the policy, like you don't skip the queue anymore? Am I doing something wrong, like should I be changing my settings, upping the speed limits or something?

OTOH like I said no one is dl'ing off of me either which is really unusual and is leading me to believe the problem is on my end.

The FAQ says something about ports needing to be opened--now I haven't changed anything with my hardware or software that I am aware of (which is why a port problem seems weird to me--it worked three months ago just fine) and have no idea how to check and see if these ports are open??

the Network Utility under Apps -> Utilities can also help you figure out which connections on what ports are working and what else is going on.

also i don't see the ports they're talking about in apple's preset list of ports?

what about the ports on the router?

they should be open automatically but it was my impression the FW was on by default on OS X, most of the time. Dunno.

recently installed mandrake 10.1 and up til today it was playing nicely with my network. today, however (after re-booting into windows for a while) i seem to be having problems with host name resolution (?) - i can successfully ping the other comps IP addy's but cannot ping their names. and smb4k will not see the computers so that i can browse their shares. i don't so far know of any other way to browse the other computers.

any ideas?

ps i also have wanted to ask here for help on getting a ssk client and dc client running. where i'm stalled out there is: things wanted me to install glibmm.. ok so that would not go without libsigc++. I successfully installed this, but still when i try to configure the glibmm it says that it cannot find the libsigc++ and that i should try to 'add the directory containing `sigc++-2.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'sigc++-2.0' found'

so i don't know how to do that. currently the sicg++-2.0.pc file is in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

also i don't really understand what's the best way to go about adding packages to the OS... what is the best procedure in terms of where to download the files to, where to unzip them, where to do the configure and install stuff, etc.

(My comp crashes frequently and I'm running out of ideas to explain why - and thinking conflicting IRQs might be at the bottom of it)

a) check that /etc/resolv.conf has your DNS server IP addresses in (NB: if you're still on dialup, then this file may well get temporarily replaced when your PPP connection is active)
b) if you've got static IPs for your computers, you can always just list them in /etc/hosts

The best way round the pkgconfig problems is to hunt the net for RPM files for your version of Mandrake for the packages you want to install. I *think* you install them with the command

rpm -ivh package-file.rpm

but you might want to check that, because I try to avoid RPM-based systems.

For the pkgconfig problems in general: to fix it for a single user, add the line:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH='/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig'

to that user's .bashrc file. (I assume you're using bash as the shell). To fix it for all users, there'll be a system-wide bash profile file somewhere under /etc (different Linuxes tend to be set up slightly differently)

An alternative way you might want to consider is to try to make sure manually-built things get installed to /usr rather than /usr/local. To do that, for most packages, when you *should* run

./configure

instead, run:

./configure --prefix=/usr

This will mean still that they might try to put files in /usr/etc, /usr/var and so on rather than the top-level directories. Whether you prefer this to /usr/local/etc, /usr/local/var and so on (which is what ./configure likes to use by default is up to you. I prefer to just use /usr/local for stuff I've built myself - but I use Gentoo, which makes many more packages available through the system installer than most Linuxes, so I've rarely had to do it anyway.

Mandrake's package manager is called urpmi. There's a tutorial here that might be useful:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/walter/geek/rpm-howto.html

I use a package manager (apt-get for Debian) to install any software I need. The only time I'll resort to installing something manually (e.g. configure && make && make install) is if the package repositories don't contain what I'm after.

On my parents' computer (running Windows XP), whenever they start up Word, it tries to install Microsoft Office XP Standard for Students and Teachers. They have Word 2002 installed, it looks like, and they don't know what could have happened that would make it ask for the installation CD-ROM every time. If they hit cancel, it works fine, but it's still annoying and mysterious (like, you know, much of their computer). Any ideas what's going on and how to stop it?

Go to Tools -> Internet Options...
Click on "Content"
Click on the "Autocomplete..." button
Click on "Clear Forms"

Firefox:

Go to Tools -> Options...
Click on "Privacy"
Click on the "Clear" button next to "Saved Form Information"

What's the deal with buying a wireless router to extend the range? Would an antenna do just as well? Can anyone recommend a good cheap solution that doesn't need uber-techieness to implement?

I've just got a new computer. It's the first time I've ever had a Proper New Computer, as opposed to a hand-me-down from someone else. As such, I want to treat her right so she'll look after me in return - chances are, I won't be able to afford another one for a very long time.

So, I'd like your collective recommendations. How can I make my new laptop last for 10 years? What's the first thing I should do? Should I uninstal IE and instal Firefox instead? (I've heard this said in the past) I want to keep her as uncluttered as possible.

What should I avoid? Will slsk cause me problems, of can it be among the first things I install (as well as musicmatch and msn messenger)?

I don't want to hurt my new baby! Best foot forward, and all that...

Get Firefox, and MS Antispyware

Make sure you have XP Service Pack 2 and go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and make sure you have all the critical updates.

Get an Antivirus programme and keep it up to date

slsk is fine

musicmatch isn't that great, there are better programmes for ripping and playing mp3a, cdex, winamp, itunes etc.

No computer will last ten years.

I only want musicmatch cos it's what I've used since 2001 so I'm used to its funtionality. What's better than it?

I know, I know, a decade is a daft aim, but you get my drift.