The best thread for boring computer questions ever in the world!

Trying to use '95 on the internet is like punching yourself in the face with every mouse click.

He needs to get on XP SP2 or Vista asap.

I mean Netscape????

It could be anything from a virus to spyware to just a screwed up browser.

There may be an old version of firefox somewhere that he could try.

I think a versions before 2.0 supported Win 95.

Actually maybe only '98.

if all these options are impossible then try to get more information about what exactly happens when he clicks on a link or tries to use google.

"There may be an old version of firefox somewhere that he could try" I will investigate this, just in case 95 is supported. Thanks. I will ask more questions about exact nature of the problem when we speak tonight. I might tell him to get a Mac!

There's an archive of old browsers here:

http://browsers.evolt.org/

I think Firefox 1 and early Opera can run on Win 95.

Oh that's wonderful! Er.. which one is Firefox, can't see it listed (I'm a dumb Safari user)?

It's under Mozilla.

Actually, on further investigation I think getting even Firefox 1.0 to work under 95 is a bit of a hassle:

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/windows_95/

doh! thanks. One last thing, will he have to do anything to prepare his system? I found this page, which makes it all sound so complicated: http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/windows_95/

x-post.
I'll look at that new link now.

Firefox is a relatively new browser. Maybe go with an early Opera or (gasp) IE.

heh, I should have checked your link - it's the same as mine isn't it...!

x-post

Is it as easy as simply downloading Opera, or does he have to do anything to prepare his system, do you think?

I think it's just as easy as downloading it. Even version 9 can run on 95 in theory, but for usability, he'd probably be better off with version 6 or something.

Alba, this is really kind of you. I imagine anything is going to be better than his faulty Netscape set up. I have just visited the Opera archives, but am lost - which is number 9 (and 6)? arc.opera.com.

I went here, http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/win/ And just a column of coded numbers, not, as I had hoped, a big finger pointing at a number 9..

The first number is the version. So all the 900 folders have version 9 stuff in. But as I say, I wouldn't actually go for a version 9 one.

http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/win/606/en/std/

Is probably the one you want.

I hope I'm not giving you a bum steer.

Oh, that's great. Sorry for all these questions! I have one more however..Will he have to unistall his Netscape or can it coexist with opera?

And please don't worry, if his puter does go into meltdown I certainly won't blame you. You've been really helpful. He should really be thinking about an upgrade, I think, anyway..

It should be able to co-exist.

He's going to give it a try, nothing to lose! Thanks Alba.

Ok, here's a really bizarre computer/power question.

My wife has a several-year-old powerbook laptop.

Several weeks ago, her computer would not charge, and the charger light was amber instead of green. She took it to the Apple Store, and the charger worked fine there. She took it home, still didn't work, but then the next day it worked fine again.

A week later, Saturday, same problem. Next day everything was fine.

A week later, Saturday, same problem. A week later, Saturday, same problem.

We've tried different outlets in the house. My laptop charges just fine. No other noticeable power problems on Saturdays.

???

It's quite possible the charger cable has a short. When you bend it just so, it charges OK.

I'm currently on my 2nd MBP power cable; the last one frayed into a burnt heap. This one charges only when I twist it just so, at this point. I usually just turn it upside-down and then it charges OK.

apple store dude claimed it wasn't the charger

thought it might be the logic board. but then we didn't have the problem for a whole week so we let it go.

Working fine again. Come on guys, this one's a real stumper!

One half-baked thought I have is that maybe either my downstairs baker landlord or my downstairs neighbor uses some high-wattage piece of machinery on Saturday only? Still not sure why nothing else in my apartment would be affected. Could also be some weird glitch in the computer itself?

My wife suggested that maybe the computer is Shomer Shabbos, a possibility bolstered by the fact that it tends to start working again SATURDAY NIGHT.

Seriously, try a diff charger.

^ scientific method

apple store dude claimed it wasn't the charger

yeh, but some apple store dude once told alext that the reason his computer was bust wasn't because the HD was physically damaged but because the fucking last.fm app was causing a memory leak. uh-huh.

i have to say, i'm with libcrypt on this one: try another charger, see what happens. if the same thing: i dunno, call ghostbusters?

ghostride the whip

So I'm all set to download/install Xubuwhatever. If I do this do I need Firefox?

Did I mention how stupid my questions are going to be?

Please be patient and explain to me what I am doing, since it's been suggested that i do it.

I'm working at home on a freelance job my friend sent me, and of course one of the files has to be in a goddamn zip. I bought WinZip for $30, as I didn't have anything to open em with on my laptop -- APPARENTLY -- and now I can't get anything but code when I open this shyit. What obvious step am I overlooking?

u mad for buying winzip

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

well, it's too late now. Using 7-zip, I'm still not going to know how to open the damn thing properly, more than likely.

in what program is the 'code' appearing?

you tried to open a zip file when you had no zip software, windows probably sais something like

"I don't know what this file is help me out here"

At this point you probably told windows to open it with Wordpad or Notepad or something, now Windows has associated zip files with that program.

If you right click on the file you probably will have a context menu to open with winzip.

no Jarlmai, I tried to open it AFTER I bought and downloaded the WinZip software. Also I don't know how to tell Windows to open anything "with" anything, nor do I ever use Wordpad or Notepad, whatever they are. You see what you're dealing with here?

mook, when I doubleclick on the file I'm trying to read, I get a WinZip window displaying the associated documents, but don't know how to opening in anything but... Internet Explorer, which is obv why I'm just getting code. How do I 're-associate'?

It's not an immediate crisis... I'll figure it out (when someone comes over and shows me).

True confession: I stumbled upon "right-clicking" about 4 months ago. omg, so THAT'S why the mouse has separate parts...!

There's no "Open With..." option when you right-click?

yes, and I open with WinZip. And I get the window with 3 different files. Then what?

They're XML files. How do I open those?

when you open the zip file, you see the archived files listed in winzip, right? just drag them to your desktop or something.

as for what you need to view/edit those unzipped files, maybe bitch at your friend. you can view xml files in internet explorer or notepad (try dragging them into an open ie/notepad window) but it'll just show code. and it doesn't really sound like you're supposed to be manipulating code . . .

No, she doesn't expect me to.

...I already asked her if she can send it in another format.

Looks like I have a pretty malicious trojan/virus on my PC which reared its ugly head all over my laptop last night.

I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, but suddenly got a bunch of pop-ups telling me I was infected with spyware, that there are "34 vulnerabilities" on my computer, and a fake antivirus program saying that I needed to pay for real time antivirus (whatever, it's fake).

The virus stops me from using other programs, telling me that the files can't be opened as they have been infected while this fake program called AV Security Suite pretends to search for viruses.

Also, it keeps trying to open internet explorer and going to pr0n sites.

I've opened in Safe mode and run AVG and Ad Aware, but this doesn't seem to have done a great deal.

I'm at work, so I don't have a great deal of specifics, but the viruses that have been identified (whether these are real or not is debatable) are:

Bankerfox.A
Sheur (followed by some random numbers - possibly Sheur5)

Really quite annoying since many of the pop-ups can't be closed or moved, so it's very hard to actually see what I'm doing on the screen and I can't open things like Google Chrome because of aforementioned issues.

Can anyone help, or is this the end?

Nuke it from orbit.

try malwarebytes, if you can get through to it...

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

and/or use msconfig to remove dodgy lookin process and things that run on startup.

thanks peeps, but other than the bit about malwarebytes, which I am in the process of doing - the rest of what you guys have said is just words. What is orbit? How do I open msconfig and what should I look out for?

http://trojan-killer.net/av-security-suite-how-to-remove-rogue-av-security-suite/

This link refers to the virus, however I'm concerned about following advice from other sites in case they are also hoax sites...

start -> run -> "msconfig" -> startup tab

search here for all the entries:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/

disable the dodgy ones.

thanks ledge!

So if I want to have an external drive wirelessly connect to my MacBook for storage of media files, am I better off getting:

1. A hard drive that plugs into my wireless router
2. Some kind of standalone wi-fi hard drive

?

Any recommendations? Are transfer rates/stability of connection likely to be a problem? Just really fed up of plugging in and ejecting a Firewire drive.

i have a time capsule i also use as a router but they are a bit pricey, no problems tho

Perfect timing! I'm going to have a boring computer problem in a few days when my roommate takes her Airport thingy on a two-month trip and I have to replace it somehow.

Do I: buy my own wireless router, and how cheaply can I get one that will still work and not break?, or...

Buy 20 feet of cable and connect directly?

xp sorry, N, I have no advice for your much more advanced question.

http://www.apple.com/uk/timecapsule/ <--- needs a separate modem tho which it sounds like you already have

Oh yeah, forgot about them. They are stupidly expensive though, and it seems a bit of a waste when I've already got a router. Thanks tho, maybe they are the best option..

i found it to be far better wireless router than the existing one i had, which probably means it is giving me cancer or something

The other thing is, I'll probably outgrow 2GB in a couple of years and then be faced with replacing it. Would rather just get a hard drive really.

Laurel - I should just get a router. Even a cheap one should last for two months ...

http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DIR-601-Wireless-Home-Router/dp/B002VJL0OS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1300551615&sr=8-3

How do I make a photo collage?

I've got about 20 digital photos which I want to arrange into a collage and then have printed on A3 paper. I can crop / resize the photos using various bits of software, but I don't know how to put them all together in one document. I basically want the whole page to consist of photographs apart from a caption in the middle - no background or gaps between photos. My colleague does this using text boxes in Word, but it takes him forever.

there is probably software to do this but i can write one for you if it doesn't exist.
one way is to make an html table with no padding,etc... and put the photos in there.

An additional complication, btw, some of the photos will be landscape, some portrait, and after cropping they won't all be in the same ratio.

Try dropping the images into an OpenOffice Draw document?

(assuming that all you want to do with the resulting collage is print it)

Downloading it now...

Picasa has really good collage tool.

Think I've done it now. The proof of the pudding will be when I get them to print it at work tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestions.

Windows 7 is asking if I want to block cookies even when Internet Explorer is not open. Anyone know what the heck is up?

Is there a sim card on yr larder lock

someone got hold my gf's phone and put the wrong code in a bunch of times and now it's locked, doesn't offer a security question or anything. thing is, she's not synced/backed up as there's too much stuff on there (photos, videos) but she really doesn't want to lose them to a factory reset. does anyone know a way of safely unlocking it, or failing that getting all the videos and photos?

s'ok, sorted. the old turn-it-off-then-on-again actually worked

Is this the newest boring computer questions thread?

Phone connects to internet fine - I'm posting from it now. But two different laptops are refusing to tether, either by usb or WiFi hotspot. I've turned everything off and on multiple times. I guess it's just a waiting game now...

powered phone off and on again seems to have worked.

this working from home using 3g is precarious. an aws ssh session lasts about 5 minutes before locking up, which is annoying. lots of vim restore files littering the place.

Hello. Recently bought a refurbished Macbook Pro off a local (trusted by friends) guy who does this sort of stuff all the time. It's working great, but I'm concerned that it seems to get extremely hot just above the keyboard. Last night the fans came on and I got a bit concerned. It's not constant. I am keeping it on a flat surface, although being a refurb the rubber feet on the bottom of the machine have come off at some point (I've ordered some new ones). I know that Macs can sometimes get hot, but I'm not sure if this is anything to worry about or not. Been trying to get hold of the dude who sold it to me but he's not the easiest to get hold of. I'm not really used to Macbooks. Should I be worried?

If the fans aren't running 100% of the time it's probably fine. It's normal for them to get hotter in one specific place (usually diretly above the heatsink).

But take a look in /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor (sort by CPU) to see if there's anything suspicious idling at 100% of CPU.

It's pretty easy to open up the back and blow out the cobwebs with compressed air though if it looks crusty. That might help keep the temp down/fans off. If you want to compare the temp before and after trying something in a non-subjective way that is also funny for british people: https://fannywidget.com/. But there's no need to obsess over temp in normal operation.

Thanks caek. Yeah it seems to happen for a fair bit of time, and it’s very noisy even when I’m not doing anything. Nothing special I could see in activities. I also noticed that the audio was doing ilthis occasional crazy stuttering thing like a delay loop every few minutes when I was trying to play tunes in VLC player, but I don’t know if that’s related or just a glitch

so many boring computer threads...

anyway, PVR packed in the other day. it failed to delete a programme, i pulled the power and now it says disk is damaged. if i plug it back in i can just about navigate to the 'repair disk' option but then it locks up.

so i pulled it apart and got the disk out, standard sata drive. plugged it into laptop using usb-to-sata cable and it reports but doesn't mount and, afaict, doesn't spin. probably not enough power from the usb to spin a 3.5" hdd. and my old tower pc predates sata.

so i had planned on taking apart one of my many powered external drives to swap the drive into it, but only one has visible screws and those are the mary quant flower-shaped screws, which i don't have a socket for.

if all else fails i can spend money on a 500GB replacement, <£20 on ebay, or the same on a powered enclosure to try and get this drive working.

(it's backup PVR, not the main one but has hours of stuff on it which i'd like to recover. contents are apparently encrypted using hardware key on motherboard but if i copy them back to new disk they should play fine)

this worked btw. bought external caddy, transplanted disk, plugged into laptop and the video partition mounted immediately, but the metadata partition struggled - 'contains valuable logs that need replaying'.

mounted using -t xfs -o norecover (it's an xfs disk) and it looked ok. ran xfsrepair with -L to delete the troublesome logs and it was fine. tried it back into the PVR and it hesitated a bit but settled down eventually. tomorrow i'll check the recordings recorded and put it back together properly.

and the best bit was that the video files were never a problem, all just sat there on the disk and playable using mplayer or vlc or whatever.

now, do i fancy a 320GB -> 2TB upgrade?