Computer question...

“Windows ME sucks all forms of butt. IT may be Microsoft's crowning glory.”

“PS I defrag monthly. Takes time, but makes a difference.”

“With XP, I have all of my utilities such as defragging and viral scanning set up to run automatically, say at 3AM on Wednesdays. Keeps the ol machine humming a little faster. OK, a lot faster.”

“Upgrading to XPm is worth it, in my opinion. I was ready to retire my work computer as after a couple hours I'd have to reboot to use my scanner or printer. A fresh install didn't help. XP has a bunch of neat utilities and it's rock solid stable.”

“I went to a job interview this morning and computer was fine. Left it on. When I awoke it from sleep mode it has this wave that starts at the top and continues to the bottom of the screen. Anyone have suggestions?

Thanks.”

“Is the wave moving or standing still?”

“Surf's up, get the board dude”

“Did you shut the machine down and leave it off? (Apparently not!)”

“screen flickers and waves aren't good...mine caught fire shortly after it started doing stuff like that”

“The wave is an electrical signal, not supposed to be making it to the electron gun, slightly out of phase with the refresh frequency which makes it move down the screen like the pulses of two guitar strings slightly out of tune.

First, check to see that there is no reason for a stray electrical or magnetic field to be making it into the pre-amps in the monitor...check speaker placement, check other CRTs, monitors or TVs near the monitor with the wave, and check the cables, especially the power feed for the monitor and the data feed from the computer to the monitor. Move these items around while watching the screen to see if the wave intensifies, changes width, speeds up or slow down. Anything that produces a visible effect starts to narrow down the culprit.

Next, bounce the machine, all the way down to a power off cold boot, let it sit, off, for a few minutes, then turn it back on and see if the wave returns. If so, try de-gaussing the monitor if it has a control for that on the menu.

If none of these affect the problem, leave it on for thirty minutes to see if it goes away. If not, then the spurious signal is probably coming from a failing component inside the monitor.

Monitor repair is usually more expensive than buying a new one, so check your warranty. If you're really hurting, look in the yellow pages under Computer Parts, Used, and you can usually pick up something that'll get you by for around $50, till you can get a new one. Wal-Mart is another inexpensive option.

Try these things, and if something not mentioned here happens, post it and I'll try to help.”

“Thanks for the help.

FWIT (For What It's Worth)

Nothing changed in physical arrangement of furniture, electronics, peripherals, etc.

De-gausing didn't work, shutting it down for awhile, leaving it on for awhile, no change.

I guess I will be looking for a monitor soon.

Again, THANKS for your help.

Mark”

“Thanks for the help.

FWIT (For What It's Worth)

Nothing changed in physical arrangement of furniture, electronics, peripherals, etc.

De-gausing didn't work, shutting it down for awhile, leaving it on for awhile, no change.

I guess I will be looking for a monitor soon.

Again, THANKS for your help.

Mark”

“I noticed in my msconfig that the uninterruptible power supply is stopped. How do I get it running again? Or should I?”

“Do you have an uninterruptable power supply? That is, a big box with batteries in it that your computer is plugged into?”

“Probably not. I was looking at my msconfig, and noticed it said stopped. From there I assumed I had it, since it was checked and had Microsoft listed as the manufacturer. It's a long story that deals with my computer not always restarting/rebooting when I want it to, and me looking around to see what might be causing it.”

“With a UPS, the computer actually runs off the battery and is disconnected from the building's 110v power. The UPS in turn, is plugged into the wall and the battery is constantly being charged. When the building's power is interrupted the battery keeps on running the computer, although most of the smaller batteries are set to automatically put the computer into the shutdown sequence since the battery can't run it for long.

Stickman, your computer thinks you are using a UPS, and is periodically sending your non-existant UPS a question, "Is everything all right with your 110v line current?" When the UPS doesn't answer the computer thinks it has been turned off and is no longer providing backup battery coverage, that you are now routed directly into the line current through the powered off UPS.

This might give you problems with your shutdown sequence. If you go to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add/Remove Hardware, you should see it listed and be able to "remove" it, at least as far as Windows is concerned. This may or may not fix the shutdown issues.”

“Thanks for the info Jeff, I'll just remove it to see what happens, since it is stopped anyway. I don't know why the problem has just cropped up in the past 2 1/2 wks or so. A majority of the time I can hit the restart button, the shutdown sequence goes through, then the system won't reboot. The power is still there, but no reboot. I'm stumped. I've gotten error messages about minidumps, too, but I think the problem is too much for me to figure out, given my limited experience with computers.”

“What's the difference between a bmp file and a jpg?”

“they are spelled different.....

8)”

“Completely different formats.

JPGs are generally more compact.”

“The Windows Bitmap (.bmp) file format is the standard file format used by Microsoft Windows. Bitmap files can contain either 2 (black and white), 16, 256 or 16.7 million colours. Most Windows Bitmap files are not compressed. They tend to be very large in file size.

The "Joint Photographic Experts Group" (.jpg) format is one of the most popular formats for Web graphics. It supports 24 bits of color information and is generally used when you're looking for a much smaller file size - for example, to use in web application.

Does that help? What exactly is the problem you're having (if any?) that brought this question up?”

“I read somewhere that jpegs "fold up" when not being used - and that bmp's do the same but are not supported by as many .... uh, can't remember that part - will try to remember the link tomm.”

“I scanned some pictures from a BP trip and was trying to email them to my brother, but it was taking forever to attach them. I guess the fact that they are so big and not compressed explains that. Is there anyway to convert them to .jpg?”

“Personally, I use Adobe Photoshop 7.0 and Adobe Image Ready 7.0 for that. Just worked on some photos today that I got back from my wedding. File sizes were well over 500Kb even in JPEG format and I was able to compress them down to about 30Kb in a matter of seconds. Both programs support almost every image type you can imagine and allow you to convert to most any image type you can imagine.
If you have a fast connection and don't have these programs, you can download a freeware version of Kazaa Lite...search for them on there and download. That's what I did.”

“beware kazaa!kazaa can really f your pc up.Its also very hard to remove from your hard driv.e”

“Dave:

Notice I said "Kazaa Lite" and not Kazaa. Kazaa Lite is an edited version of Kazaa that someone so thoughtfully arranged to take out all the spyware and popup banner crap. I'll give you the link if you want. I can also help you remove Kazaa standard and reverse the bad stuff it did to your computer if you need help.”

“Perhaps I could clarify,
bmp - uncompressed raw data. each dot or pixel is represented by a number in a square grid where the location of that number corresponds directly to the dot in the picture. each picture is sized by the first two bytes(?) in the file indicating length and width.


jpeg is a way to compress bitmap files and reduce their size.It supports several compression formats some of which lose data to provide better compression but degrade picture quality and some that do not.

when converting from bmp to jpeg I suggest that you do all your cropping and so on first to help preserve image quality.

Gif is older then jpeg but was abandoned when the owner demanded royalties. Jpeg and bmp are both public domain,royalty-free formats and not related to windows. There are many other formats availible depending on OS and application used but most are subject to patent restrictions.

oh and just to piss off the micro serfs, xerox invented windows and apple developed it. (sorry couldnt resist)”

“I'd heard about the Kazaa problems, but I figured spybot s&d would defeat it. At any rate, I figured out how to convert with Photoshop after you reminded me I had it.”

“You might want to check out a program called Ulead Photo Explorer. It can batch convert, batch name and it you can view all you pictures in Thumbnails. It is a nice program. I would not use the tools on Ulead, but would leave that to Photoshop.

I did purchase it, but I also found it on Kazaa. Your choice.”

“diet kazaa not kazaa lite..or they might have both..but i have diet”

“same concept, different name.”

“Ok, my computer is pissin me off. Every 5 minutes or so i get an error... "Explorer has caused an error in...." This causes my desktop to dissappear and all i'm left with is a blue background and whatever non-explorer windows i had open at the time. I have the pos, os - ME. is there a solution, or at least a fix when it happens so i don't have to restart?”

“there it is... explorer has caused an error in wcyiaot.dll”

“uh, oh. the dreaded .dll's”

“If you haven't in a while...my solution to most problems is reformating the hard drive. It's not that hard and should be done every 6 months to a year anyway.”

“I just reinstalled XP Pro, but I no longer have Word, Excel, or any of the other programs I had. I'm thinking that when my dad gave me the computer, he had installed XP office on it. Is that right, or should XP Pro have that stuff already? Shouldn't XP Pro have some kind of word processor built in?”

“No. You'll need to get a disc.

If the computer came with a recovery CD, you may have some programs there.”

“You have to buy a word processor anyway to abide by copyright laws... if your dad has the cds for Office XP, he can delete Office off his computer and you can use the CDs to put Office on your computer and be with in the law.... ahem. If no CDs are around... get used to Wordpad.”

“do you wish to debug?
line 97; syntax error

Seems like it happens almost every other time I go to another page.”

“I meant to add: What does it mean and can I fix it?”

“I try to avoid using Internet Exploder except when Netscape won't work, but I think it's objecting to illegal or improper Active X code on the website.”

“how come there's lines in some images on the internet, i was looking for a nice desktop (the believe symbol) and everything has lines through it, like lycos images and stuff.

This is an older comp, i just got it set up for school, i just set up xp on it, and it's working well... i just gotta get rid of these lines.”

“The desk top was working fine this afternoon. Shut it down for a couple of hours, my wife started it up but it won't boot--or I should say boot to Windows98.

Tried the 'boot' disk with CD 'support' but the bugger goes to the "a" prompt.

Am I screwed, again?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mark”

“New hard drive.”

“It booted this morning! Weird. Can I say backup?”

“Make SURE you run one of those system doctor CDs to verify you don't have FAT damage. (OK, you techies, don't even start -- I know some HDs technically don't have FATs.)

Also, you might want to check into one of those HD reliability CDs too, they might spot a latent tendency of your HD to fail in the near future.”

“What's a good graphics card, and how much can I expect to pay for it? Mainly for gaming. I think my graphics card is what's causing my computer to crash when playing certain games, even though one of the games is from 1997.”

“Hey stick try changing your slider on your graphics options. Right click your my computer icon then go to advanced then grapics memory and change the slider to two thirds the way instead of all the way. Many ppl have that prob. If not check on a new video card.”

“The software tends to lag behind the hardware, so most of the programs out now will run on a Geforce 2, 3, or 4 with 64 MB of video memory. A GF2 can be had for $50 to $75, and the GF4's can go up to $400 or more.

BTW, almost every lockup I've ever seen are either driver issues, memory paging errors or hardware resource conflicts. Substandard hardware, if it runs at all, will usually just run slow, not lock the box.”