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Can no-one help me with my piddling little question?

― Rumpington Lane, Friday, 7 January 2005 13:48 (twenty years ago)

Charlie:

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.

― TOMBOT, Friday, 7 January 2005 14:32 (twenty years ago)

you may also want to check out the list of programs that are marked to run on startup by running msconfig (then go to 'startup' tab) and uncheck those that don't look vital. There's probably a lot of things running on startup hogging your memory.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 7 January 2005 14:56 (twenty years ago)

oh, and rumpy, I don't know what you mean by 'clear my MSN search box'...do you have autocomplete or something?

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 7 January 2005 14:57 (twenty years ago)

gnoppix is better than knoppix bcause it has the gnome (please say that out loud pronounching everything Guh-no... an Kuh-no...)

― Ed (dali), Friday, 7 January 2005 15:20 (twenty years ago)

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?

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Friday, 7 January 2005 15:32 (twenty years ago)

Yeah Teeny...

― Rumpington Lane, Friday, 7 January 2005 15:40 (twenty years ago)

Go to the start menu, select "Run...", and type msconfig in the box.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 7 January 2005 15:42 (twenty years ago)

but I would do tombot's thing first, restart in safe mode and run all your antivirus and antispyware stuff, that'll get rid of a lot of the bad executables that run on startup.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 7 January 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

rumpy - Tools/ Internet Options/ Content/ Autocomplete

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 7 January 2005 15:59 (twenty years ago)

then pick 'clear forms' and uncheck the 'forms' box, I think that'll do it.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 7 January 2005 16:00 (twenty years ago)

so i'm trying to rip ghostface's "supreme clientele" for my ipod on my powerbook g4, but the computer won't even recognize the cd when i put it in--it doesn't even mount! any tips?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 9 January 2005 17:13 (twenty years ago)

Charlie, you need to run adaware, spybot search and destroy and an updated virus checker, AVG is free, CWShredder may help.

Haha I ran AVG on Friday. It found 1,002 - that's ONE THOUSAND AND TWO, folks - viruses on my PC! Mainly trojan horses, but a handful of dialers too.

I've deleted the lot, natch, and done the msconfig thing, and still there are pop-ups on start-up, and problems finding applications (especially the defrag button), and now I've just installed my digicam picture viewer and suddenly AOL won't connect to the interweb anymore! Argh!

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 10 January 2005 10:09 (twenty years ago)

CWShredder did wonders for my filthy hard drive.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 10 January 2005 11:30 (twenty years ago)

Charlie, it sounds like your computer is totally messed up and I suspect you're not going to be able to do yourself all the necessary things to clean it - all you need to do is delete one thing wrongly or not delete one other thing and you're fucked. I second the "take it to an expert" option.

Or - can you justify buying a new one?

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 10 January 2005 11:42 (twenty years ago)

Or - can u find someone w/Windows install disks? I did a "format c:" on my parents' hard drive, reinstalled their applications, put their documents back on and it's like night and day. Took about a week to do, mind.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 January 2005 16:43 (twenty years ago)

Ta Teeny, tried that but I'm still getting all my searches showing. I've cleared my history and all temporary files, but still... sigh. It's pissing me off, some of my old searches were pretty embarrassing such as 'Dennis from Eastenders' which appears as soon as I put a D in the box.

*Blushes*

― Rumpington Lane, Monday, 10 January 2005 16:54 (twenty years ago)

Could somebody tell this Layman the main differences/pros & cons between Airport EXTREME and Aiport EXPRESS?

― .adam (nordicskilla), Monday, 10 January 2005 16:55 (twenty years ago)

Extreme is a normal wireless transmitter for the Internet, that also includes a little port to plug a network printer into. It's capable of very fast connection speeds.

Express is a smaller and slightly slower wireless transmitter, but it does something Extreme doesn't do, it allows you to play music wirelessly into any old stereo (and it plugs right into the electrical socket in your wall).

I think this is right.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:06 (twenty years ago)

Thanks, Tracer!

What is the difference in speed between the two?

A little backstory-I currently have my Powerbook anchored to cable modem in the corner of my house, but considering long-term costs I am thinking of getting Airport (our only phone jack is in the kitchen) and switching to DSL. I just worry about everything slowing down.

― .adam (nordicskilla), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:14 (twenty years ago)

I don't know adam, what is the difference in these numbers from Apple's website?

http://images.apple.com/airportexpress/images/index_speed12162002.gif

― TOMBOT, Monday, 10 January 2005 17:18 (twenty years ago)

Jesus, this is like going to the optometrist.

― .adam (nordicskilla), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:19 (twenty years ago)

DSL will slow you down appreciably I would think. Stick with cable and get airport express. Or better yet just get a Linksys 802.11g router and learn to play with MAC spoofing from the web GUI.

― TOMBOT, Monday, 10 January 2005 17:21 (twenty years ago)

Maybe I wasn't clear - Cable is $60 a month, DSL is $20...so I was thinking that buying a abse station to stick in the kitchen would actually save me money in the long term. My house is a tiny bungalow so being wireless for the sake of it isn't that important to me.

― .adam (nordicskilla), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:24 (twenty years ago)

charlie have you also run spybot? just AVG won't do the trick, that's just for virii, spybot is for spyware. D/L spybot, (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html), do the first run-through (being sure to download any updates, it'll guide you through it the first time) THEN DISCONNECT YOUR COMPUTER FROM THE INTERNET, reboot, and run both AVG and Spybot again.

You might also find this useful: http://scribbling.net/how-to-fix-moms-computer

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:28 (twenty years ago)

Ah aha, now I understand better.
Well with DSL it seems unlikely you'd need 802.11g 54Mbps.
You could probably get by just fine with an 802.11b router, which Ally has in her place and I find to be plenty quick actually.

try HERE maybe you can find out what kind of speed difference to expect for the privilege of saving a paltry $40 a month

― TOMBOT, Monday, 10 January 2005 17:31 (twenty years ago)

Dude, do you know how many burritos that buys?

― .adam (nordicskilla), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:35 (twenty years ago)

I'm talking about the ones with the gourmet tortillas, too.

― .adam (nordicskilla), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:35 (twenty years ago)

all non-Chipotle burritos have been banned in Washington DC
you can make them at home, but like if you want to take one to work to eat for lunch you have to tell people it's a "wrap."

― TOMBOT, Monday, 10 January 2005 17:38 (twenty years ago)

I upgraded from b to g and it's an improvement but not a huge one for the way I use the internet; the b equipment is cheaper.

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:38 (twenty years ago)

Ooh Tom it's the same speed? Then why in the world would anyone get Extreme? Just to use a network printer??

I've actually got a Linksys that I'm about to hook up in a week or two, to a home network of two (2) macs. Do I actually need to mess about with MAC spoofing? I actually have zero idea abbout setting it up, all I know is that I can point my browser to the router's address and there's some web-based admin form.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 January 2005 17:47 (twenty years ago)

My boring question: telnet or some equivalent, how do you do it from a Mac?

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 13 January 2005 13:55 (twenty years ago)

open up terminal.app (/Applications/utilities)

type: telnet hostname/IP

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 13 January 2005 14:13 (twenty years ago)

On a Mac? That looks suspiciously like instructions for the PC.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 13 January 2005 14:17 (twenty years ago)

Tracer: I'll walk you through it, you have to mess about with it if you don't want to call TimeWarner and tell them you purchased your own router and have them lay into you about how they would prefer it if you rented their router and had their technician come set it up blah blah blah blah blah blah blah that will be $300 please.

Ken L: yeah but you can also just go to your web broswer and type in telnet://your.address.here and it'll work too, launch the program for you if you don't want to remember to find terminal.

― Allyzay Needs Legs More (allyzay), Thursday, 13 January 2005 18:20 (twenty years ago)

OH JESUS Tracer, a warning in advance: I'd recommend the Linksys router, it's fast and it's cheap, a lot cheaper than a fucking airport that's for sure, but they do NOT tell you this on their website (and there's virtually no instructions in the box besides the basic "how you set up the first time" pictorial):

A) If you are doing the MAC cloning you have to have your computer physically linked to the router, do not do it over wireless.

B) If you are updating the software for the hardware you also cannot do this over wireless.

C) You cannot do B anyway using a Mac.

Not paying attention to these three steps will result in your router being completely fried. The upshot is that they send you a replacement immediately, for free, because their website DOES NOT TELL YOU THAT YOU CANNOT UPDATE SOFTWARE USING A MAC.

― Allyzay Needs Legs More (allyzay), Thursday, 13 January 2005 18:24 (twenty years ago)

ken, that is indeed the instructions for a mac

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 13 January 2005 20:22 (twenty years ago)

OK, I'll try when I get home, thanks Ed and Ally.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 13 January 2005 20:27 (twenty years ago)

Also other fun details about linksys equipment, if you are using their router AND their cable modem, do not assume that each of them will work with the other's AC adapter, just because they look the same and all that. That will also fry the router, and they will nto send you a replacement.

― TOMBOT, Thursday, 13 January 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

how important is this "I386" folder on my computer? I need more hard drive space to download ~~porn~~ adobe crap. I don't know jack about windows/PCs.

― bnw (bnw), Thursday, 13 January 2005 21:00 (twenty years ago)

I think you should just delete anything with a funny name and see what happens.

― Pears can just fuck right off. (kenan), Thursday, 13 January 2005 21:01 (twenty years ago)

FYI, if you do get a Linksys wireless, PLEASE change the generic "linksys" name to something else. I'm occasionally running into network collisions when I'm leeching wireless because there are competing wireless routers with the same broadcast name.

― Gator Magoon (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 13 January 2005 22:00 (twenty years ago)

Can someone recommend a good newsreader that can combine, or (better yet pre-copile, like unison) parts of a post for OS 9?

― 57 7th (calstars), Friday, 14 January 2005 03:56 (twenty years ago)

All right, telnet is working thanks. Doesn't map some foreign language characters right but you can't have everything.

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 14 January 2005 04:00 (twenty years ago)

Dude, that's why you leave it "linksys". It completely fuxors leechers who are between two people with "linksys". Which is ok unless your neighbor with "linksys" is actually close enough to you for the networks to occasionally overlap, making your computer vomit on itself.

― Allyzay Needs Legs More (allyzay), Friday, 14 January 2005 04:06 (twenty years ago)

Another one: is it possible to run bittorrent in OS 9?

― 57 7th (calstars), Friday, 14 January 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)

Newswatcher used to be really good for Mac OS 9. There was YA-Newswatcher (Yet Another) and NA-Newswatcher (Not Another) I have no idea if they are still developed as I gave up on Mac's around OS 9.1 in 1998 or 99. Newswatcher is one of the only programs I actually miss.

― svend (svend), Friday, 14 January 2005 04:19 (twenty years ago)

thanks svend, newswatcher does the trick.

― 57 7th (calstars), Friday, 14 January 2005 05:17 (twenty years ago)

Dude, that's why you leave it "linksys". It completely fuxors leechers who are between two people with "linksys".

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

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 14 January 2005 12:07 (twenty years ago)

BMW,

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...)

― KeithW (kmw), Friday, 14 January 2005 12:33 (twenty years ago)

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