A thread for boring computer questions.

That seems a little extreme.

how fast is it flickering?

i had trouble here when i had a desk fan too close to the monitor. anything with an electric motor (next door's washing machine, grrr) in it can cause wobbling like this. bad news if you have a pacemaker. move it (the monitor, not the pacemaker) well away from anything else that's electrical.

check the refresh rate on the monitor as well - too low and you'll notice it (although i don't think this is only an issue with crts)

Is it usual for a 2-disk game to use the second disk as it's starting disk? for instance once you've installed it all and then you click the icon on your desktop, would it be normal for you to need the second disk inserted first?

my mate had installed cossacks 2 and he was getting an error when he put disk 1 in, saying that he "needed to insert the game disk". when we tried the other disk 2 there was no error message at all, just nothing happened (it turns out that he doesn't have enough RAM to run it which rang alarm bells)

It's not a regular flicker - it's just at times, without warning, the display will become darker, or change rapidly for a few seconds then either stay darker or become lighter again. I'm pretty certain it's not outside interference - the nearest thing with a motor in it is the computer fan which is about a metre away.

Monitor cable?

the only other suggestion i have is to check for a loose video cable.. or swap it out if possible. reseat the video card? replace it?

(argh, xpost!)

i have a question too!

my hard drive fried recently, and the guy told me that it could have happened because i was using a program that didn't go with my operating system (i've got osx panther right now). before this happened i figured that if i tried to use anything that wasn't cool my computer would yell at me or not let me use it, but noooooo. i usually check the system requirements, but i have the feeling there's more to it.

so, is there any trick to tell if a program is cool to use or not?

whoever told you that was smoking crack, dodgy software will not fry the hard drive.

Well, yes and no.

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda

couldn't do that without sudo.

can winzip open .sitx files or will my friend have to rename the archive to have .zip extension?

i've run into a problem with fasthosts. i registered a domain name through ukreg, and also bought some webspace, too, through fasthosts (ukreg's hosting partner). it comes with like 200 email addresses. the problem is, it won't allow me to use their SMTP servers unless i'm a fasthosts broadband or dialup customer!!! this is, to me, outrageous. what can i do to send email from my new domain name if they won't let me use their SMTP servers? can i make some kind of arrangement with the people i pay for my home internet access?

hey coz, why doesn't she/you just download stuffit expander?

the YSI was for one of the lawyers at work and I think I'm already pushing his technical know-how by going through YSI never mind through winzip... and nevermind through downloading-then-using stuffit : /

another boring computer question

OK I am trying to set up my PS2 to go online

I have the PS2, the broadband, and the PS2 network adaptor which has an ethernet port and ethernet cable supplied

my current home network is wireless:

internet -> linksys modem -> apple airport

how do I fit my PS2 into that set-up so that I can still route the signal around the house AND play online on the PS2?

the usual config would be:

internet -> modem -> network adapter -> PS2

I think:

I need something so I can connect the PS2 and the airport into the modem

I'm not sure if the modem has more than one ethernet port

I think it doesn't

any ideas?

: /

what I need is another airport, huh?

wow! ideal

I need to split a 13 character string into chunks of 2,3 and 8 characters using PHP.

eg
$Key = "abcdefghijklm";

Needs to magically become
$Key_a = "ab";
$Key_b = "cde";
$Key_c = "fghijklm";

Can I just slice characters off the front and back of the string? If so, how?

Thanks.

Does substr sound right?

Got it.

As you were.

(asking questions you can find out the answer to quite easily C/D)

yes xpost

it keeps coming up "failed DNS test" when I follow that guys advice

I have inputed the DNS figures I got from my ISP into the PS2 config and the airport config, as he has done... but the guy above also have DNS figures inputed into the ethernet config and he didn't say where he got them...

it says "test network connection" and there are 5 amber lights

the first light goes green and it says "connection to network established"

"testing DNS", second light then goes red and it says "failed DNS test"

no-one?

cozen, he's using 192.168.2.1 -- this is what macs use as their own "local" address, if the mac itself is acting as a router. i barely know what this means, but try inputting 192.168.2.x in those places (where x is any number between 0 and 255) ... of course i might be totally off here, too...

by the way, i totally figured out my can't-send-mail problem. i just configured my mac to use its own built-in SMTP server! i feel like a BAD ASS.

thanks tracer... I think I might have tried that but I'll try it again... I think the whole process is a total work-around anyway... some voodoo shit

Anyone have any idea why my iBook G3 keeps spitting out one particular CD when I insert it (Bob Dylan, "Blood on the Tracks")? I put it in the tray and slide it into the computer. The computer reads it for a few seconds and then ejects the tray. It's very odd.

Every other CD works besides B. Dylan Blood on the Tracks. I tried it on my girlfriend's newer iBook and it works fine. I've shut down the computer multiple times and tried it over a few days. WTF?

Was sent some word documents attached to a meeting request on Outlook, spent all morning completing the documents, saved and replied. I Accepted and the whole thing disappeared. My boss got my acceptance, but not the documents - my fault for not attaching them, but where have they gone?

They're not in my sent items, nor in my recent documents, not even in my temp folder.

Surely if I saved the Word doco it MUST be somewhere?

Do you remember what you called it? Try searching your hard drive.

I've done a search, took forever, but it's not showing. This is mental. Surely nothing can just vanish from your p.c?

Hmmm that would be odd. But not impossible. I guess that it should be hanging around somewhere. Do you remember where you saved it? Presumably you've already looked there if you do.

I've had to fill it all out again. It was saved into a Temp folder - I checked when I was saving the second one, there was one with the same title in the folder but when I tried to open it, it said the file was missing or corrupt.

I think my second draft is better than the first one so I'll draw a line under this!

Outlook puts my received attachments in this path: Documents and Settings\< user login >\Local Settings\Temporary Internet files\OLKC3. If you did a Save rather than a Save As... it might have gone somewhere like that.

this is probably more 'stupid' than 'boring' but does anyone know if i make a data disc of mp3s on a pc can someone with a mac easily extract the files? i'm on xp, don't know which os they have, but i assume it's current.

yes, they can.

awesome. thanks!

You used to have to specify which format you wanted (if you burned a CD with Mac) but now you can swap easily between systems.

I need to back up about 16 GB of stuff on my laptop, in case the thing craps out. it's mostly music,and I have neither an iPod nor plans to get one anytime soon. what's the best/cheapest way to do this?

wouldn't burning a DVD suffice? that's how i'd do it... but then i'm not clever with comps.

I've lost my Explorers address bar. I keep going into View, Toolbars and selecting Address Bar (it's got a tick at it!) but no joy.

I'm fuming.

I've logged off and back on, I've even restarted (that old fallback) still no change.

you probably dragged it off to the side, by mistake, meaning it's still there but you can't see it

see if you can see a line, that might be its edge, over to the right, click inside it and drag back? or maybe drag the whole taskbar bit down, yeah, try that

Hmmm, no, trying that, the cursor ain't changing at all to let me drag the toolbar down, there's no line that could be the address bar....

How long can you expect a pc laptop to last if you use it to play music continuously for around 6 or 7 hours each day (as well using it for internet/email etc)?

Is the music being played from file, or from CD?

(I ask because in the past when I've used PCs to play CDs a lot, the CD drive has always been the first part of the PC to fail)

From the hard disk using iTunes and external speakers. Is this likely to cause they hard disk to wear out quicker?

I only use the CD drive to rip CDs rather than play CDs, as I've also had experience of them failing in the past.

I don't think it would noticeably shorten your hard disk life, no.

Still no address bar. This is killing me.

OK...so we're moving from Macs to PCs at work (I keep my Mac yay!).

We all currently use Mail.app and Address Book; we're going onto an exchange server with the PCs. So - how do I:

- (as nearest thing to techie) get Mail.app mails into Outlook? Everyone but me uses 10.3, I'm on 10.4
- Get iCal into Outlook calendars
- Get address book into Outlook address books

Given that I'll be using a Mac at home, what's the best setup? Use entourage at home and connect that way? And can I use Thunderbird to talk to an exchange server?

Whenever I search for something (Google, Ebay etc) I get a pop up box which asks me to insert link into it. I just cancel it and it goes away, but get's a bit annoying every time I search for something.

mail.app will interface with the exchange server (and well, if you have 10.4). I'm not sure about getting that stuff INTO the exchange server though. Presumably once everything is switched over there, you won't need to use your old calendar appointments (uh, because they'll be in the past).

entourage is a POS, don't bother with it.