A thread for boring computer questions.

Fuck this. it's beer time.

http://lawver.net/geek/geeked/002212.php

These are clear instructions for how to install MT... on OS X.

What, it isn't beer time? Damn.

OK, so I have a question.

I have a PC on long-term loan, from a mate who's gone abroad, which over the past year has become slower and slower - pop-ups everywhere ("simply the best!" being the main culprits), another unwanted and useless search window every time I use Google, and all sorts of other gremlins.

While my mate (the owner) has blamed it on me downloading too much t33n-g0th-sc4t-pr0n - an outrageous slur and not true (honest!) - I think it'sd down to my flatmate and his constant search for ever better MP3 mixing software.

Last night, I emptied the C: drive of all my MP3s, documents and JPGs, with a view towards either formatting the hard drive, or defragging the thing, or both if necessary/useful.

I just want to drag the lake, so to speak, to get rid of all the detritus.

But.

Apparently I can't format the HD without a disc to reinstall Windows afterwards, and I don't have one of those.

And I can't, literally can't, find the defrag application anywhere on my PC. Programs/Accessories/System Tools? Nope, not there. But it must be somewhere, right?

Help! Urgh.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php
http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/cwshredder_download.html

http://www.ewido.net/en/download/

Do the above gizmos prevent more bad things happening, or actually *purge* bad things that have already happened? In my head, I'm imagining a little fella climbing in and out of every nook and cranny of my PC, grabbing nastiness and putting it in a box like a Ghostbuster, then throwing the box into the ether when it's finished...

It's driving me nuts - often when I have just one window open, trying to open another window, or a document, or a jpg or whatever, results in an "insufficient memory - please close some programs and try again" message...THERE'S NOTHING TO CLOSE, ASSHATS.

*sob*

I mean, I can't say I have a lot of experience with it; I was trying to show a friend a bit about programming and he wanted to know about PHP, so that's about the limit of my experience with it, but it was quite straightforward. PHP was a little more hassle, just editing a couple of files as I remember. Apache was about as easy as installing software gets.

We've used it on an ad-hoc basis at work under Windows too.

Does it not work or something?

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/malware.ars

It might make things clearer.

If you're *really* stuck, Windows does have a Unix-style /etc/hosts file hidden away in the depths; you might be able to hack that about to get it to work.

(on my work box, which is running XP Pro, it's C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts)

But, as Ed said, you're probably better off going dual-boot and running Apache on Linux.

Anyway, my Windows machine is an inferior piece of crap, part MMLXXXIV.

Start->Run

Type cmd

and type: ipconfig

and you'll get a line that says something like: IP Number: 192.168.0.2

If this changes after a reboot, then you've been assigned a new one (this gets more complicated if you're on some sort of wireless network or internal network).

I wouldn't worry too much about being hacked. Whilst it is possible, the media makes it seem much more likely than it actually is. Taking sensible precautions (firewall for example, not running executables you get in emails) is usually good enough.

Windows only allows IP addresses for the DNS servers, and not FQDNs, unlike UNIX TCP/IP stacks which can use both forms.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1784110589;fp;2;fpid;1277378924

Well, that's stupid.

If this changes after a reboot, then you've been assigned a new one (this gets more complicated if you're on some sort of wireless network or internal network).

You can also try to force them to reassign you by typing: ipconfig /release

(although they may well just reassign you the same address right back)

Does being able to do this win you anything? Surely it's not going to work unless you have the FQDN mapped to the IP number in /etc/hosts, which kind of defeats the point unless I'm missing something.

Maybe this article will help; it all seems quite possible:

http://www.desilva.biz/apache/virtual.html

http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php

I think it's on one of the advanced tabs on Control Panel->Windows Firewall.

Right. So I downloaded all of the above. The only one that would even run was AVG, but that froze after 10 minutes. The others wouldn't run at all, as the PC did its usual "not enough active memory, please close some applications and try again" trick - EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE OPEN AT ALL.

What I'd really dearly like to do, is reformat my hard drive and start the whole thing from scratch. But I don't have a Windows disc. Any free alternatives to Windows? I've been considering Firefox, but that's just for tinternet, right? How does Linux work?

Ug.

If this sort of fannydangle is anyone's bread and butter - any help gratefully taken.

(people here have had the same problem)

so, you're right, i'd have to get someone else to d/l it for me, but i couldn't actually *use* it, could i? it's just a demo, right? hmmm.

with every passing day, i realise how little i actually know about computers is in inverse proportion to how much my family thinks i know. gah.

I usually hate reccomending people do this due to the amount of unscrupulous PC shops there are out there taking advantage of people lack of knowledge.

A knoppix CD would get you up and running for most things but in the long term having your PC back with an installed OS is reccomended.

Boot your PC in Safe mode

Run the aforementioned programs.

Now make sure you have some kind of software firewall that starts up when windows does and restart your machine.

aha! now that sounds more than plausible. it seems to be trying to run various things on start-up, then not being able to find the executable files, and thus getting confused and crotchety (or is that me?).

Now, how do I run msconfig? Where/what is it?