A thread for boring computer questions.

The really evil thing is that the mouse pointer gets buggered up as well.

I know, it's very disorienting

um... why is my virtual machine (xp via vmware fusion) failing to pick up my wireless network and then when it did apparently 'see' it and connect it didn't have any traffic up or down

possible help here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/111646

I seemingly held my finger on the <Shift> key for two long and now my keyboard has some kind of delay on it that makes typing almost impossible. It clears if I hold down the shift key for 10 seconds or so ... but how can I resolve this permanently?

Question 2: My subscription to Norton has lapsed. I've noticed that if I buy it new from PC World this works out cheaper than re-knewing my subscription online ... would it work to do the former?

get Avast.

free version?

yeah

If you want to pay get NOD32.

Any thoughts on the shift key question?

Maybe you somehow changed the default, have a look at it with regedit and see what it says.

If you can look at User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Keyboard] the default should be set to 1.

> Any thoughts on the shift key question?

settings are under Accessibility somewhere (control panel? accessories?) but they've never made much sense to me.

Control Panel --> Accessibility Options. In the Keyboard tab, UNCHECK ALL THAT FUCKING SHIT!

cozwn: do you have an IP address conflict between your vm and your host pc?

thanks mr snrub, was posting from linux so didn't have that information to hand but i know it sometimes bites me due to my habit of pressing shift and then forgetting which other key i was going to press.

(keyboard problem resolved - thanks)

is there any advantage (on windows xp) to using a fully installed version of a program rather than a portable version?

FYI: There's a fault on virgin.net, whereby the spam filter is being ridiculously over-zealous. It's apparently being fixed but in the meantime you need to go to your webmail (ie. online) and check the spam box to see what has been intercepted.

anyone have any idea why i cannot access ilx from my home computer? it appears to be the only site (at least i haven't encountered any others) that i can't reach.

windows xp sp2
doesn't matter which browser (tried firefox, ie, opera) -- firefox says the connection has been reset
pinging ilxor.com from the command line returns 'no response from host'
winmtr gives me a lovely list of ip addresses that seem to be working fine, then 'no response from host' on the last one
trying 72.249.72.243 gives the same result
looked at my hosts file, nothing appears to be amiss
nothing on various virus/spyware scans
nothing unusual looking on a hijack this scan
wtf

sp3, actually, i guess

i have rebooted, reset the router/modem, all that shit

this isn't a good fix, but have you tried using a public proxy server in your browser settings and see if it works that way?

yeah, i was gonna try that at some point i guess. it is v. strange

What do you get when you go to http://sandbox.thehold.net/ILX/ ?

i think i tried that and could not connect, but i'm not sure. will try when i get home.

yeah, sandbox doesn't work either

did your wife install netNanny?

a probing question

i am able to connect via a proxy. uh, what does this mean?

there's probably some blocking software on your end

unless your ISP decided to block ILX for some reason

same problem here. it was fine until the server outage, now i can't connect except via proxy. tried the whole reboot/restarting router/modem/clearing cache etc.

weird. no other sites are affected. i wonder how many people think it's still down..

out of curiosity, is your isp v3r1z0n?

The hosts did do a network reconfigure recently, which could potentially be causing this. We had a problem not long after we moved there with some machines (mostly Linux iirc) not being able to connect. I'll dig up the emails and see what changed.

serious qn

how do I make my internet faster? is upgrading the only option? I was in the apple store today and ws like woah

If you can get virgin cable there's a 50mb option which is wau fast. Otherwise try adsl2 (o2/be).

oooh I'm on virgin; I'll give them a call

thanks stet

<yahooanswerstypebullshit>My mouse is frozen in the center of my screen! Waht are do!

It's a laptop touch pad. I don't have another mouse to test if it's strictly the touch pad or what. Um. It's like this at start up every time. And I couldn't figure out how to disable/enable it in the control panel. Ummm.

I think that's all I got. System restore???

Is there a key combination to lock the pad whilst you type? Maybe you've done that by accident.

try reinstalling the touchpad drivers?

get really used to alt+tab and tab?

System Restore to like 4 days ago seemed to work, hopefully whatever went haywire doesn't resurface. I don't think it was some key-combo lock (though I've pulled that shit before), it was only ever locked on startup and only did so like 1 in 3 startups, wasn't til just tonight that it was locked dead center every time. Well, hopin.

This is more irritating than boring: I think ppl are on my network. It's running hell of slow today. The only time it ran more slowly was when

a) old roommate was torrenting
b) when new tenants downstairs did same (they had the password because I gave it to the old tenants for their last few days...then I changed it)

how do i find out if ppl be creeping on my network? it's WPA2 protected, and closed, so it shouldn't show up on anyone's computer

>:(

login to the router through the web interface (perhaps at http://192.168.0.1/) and there will be some way of getting a list of "connected clients" or something like that. you should recognize each one. check MAC addresses to confirm if unsure.

is anyone having problems with windows media player, since the last update? mine crashes all the time, randomly, when playing playlists of avi files.

or what's a good alternative avi player?

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/