Computer Question

“OK dagnabit. Everytime I step away from my computer for even 1 minute the thing goes to 'sleep' How in the world do I make it stop going to sleep!????”

“Don't stroke its keys so hard, then you won't satisfy it and it won't have a reason to roll over and go to sleep.”

“start/ settings/control panel/power options, usually.”

“Also could be start/settings/control panel/display/screen saver, if you have both set up.”

“ok I got it...thanks! Its got all this different stuff 'bout running on the battery etc etc. Was defaulted to 2 minutes.”

“yw”

“bad news in computer land. I think my hardrive crashed at home. I locked up the other day. Rebooted and got the blue screen. Dell Dimension btw. all attempts to reboot failed and go back to the blue screen. I hit an F12 during bootup and ran hard disk check. My drive came back "Fail reference 7" or something like that" I'm computer illiterate dammit. Have I lost everything on my hard drive? All my digital pics are on there! I did not have backup set up yet.

Computer is still under warranty with DELL”

“I would recommend you DO NOT continue to boot your computer. You could cause further damage to it making files unrecoverable. Have somebody either boot up with a bootable CD, maybe a linux CD, and check the data on your hard drive.

Otherwise, just wait for Dell and don't let them take or reformat your drive.”

“Can you get the exact failure code?”

“yeah, but i'd have to reboot again”

“Well, since it's still under warranty, I'd leave it alone until Dell sends someone to fix it. If you're lucky (like I was once) there's a bad block in the boot partition or something like that, and most of the data can still be recovered from the disk.

Good luck! And do your backups!”

“Call Dell for support. They will sell you a CD for a hundred bucks that will reformat your hard drive and destroy your system further. World-class customer support!”

“Indiana John - Hopefully bitpusher's problem is what you have. More commonly with Dell computers specifically (due to the cheap Maxtor drives they use), there are critical failures.

My newest Dell has a Raid 0 (for performance), plus an additional more reliable drive for full back-ups which I use occassionaly after making significant additions.

If you store files you aren't willing to part with you might want to consider a back up system after this repair is complete.”

“Call the Geek Squad!”

“I will definitely be backing up now. I planned to before, just hadn't gotten around to it.”

“Good luck with Dell's customer disservice department.”

“Don't call the Geek Squad...they'll screw it up, for sure. I know a lot of people that have had bad experiences with the Geek Squad.

I had a friend who had a dell hard drive fail under warranty. They sent someone to the house to install a new hard drive and then got it back to the way it came from the factory. They let the guy keep his hard drive to see if he could have someone recover his data. He would send it back to Dell if/when his data was recovered. He also had to re-install all software he had installed on the old hard drive.

Dell will not recover your data for you, but will recommend a company that 'might' be able to do it for some pretty large amounts of dinero.”

“What OS?

What was the last thing you did on your computer?

Have you deleted any files?”

“precision come to think of it yes. The last thing i did was run Norton. I was in a hurry and hit delete files that it found as problems. I did'nt mean to do that till I read through them!! Computer was ok for bit but later locked up when trying to open a folder of photos and run a slideshow.

Norton software has never deleted anything it wasn't supposed to in the past? I haven't been hooked to the net in six months because of my recent move, so I don't think it was virus related?”

“Hopefully that's your problem.”

“Precision its Windows XP the drive is a Maxtor”

“Try to boot up and press F8 to get to the alternative boot menu.

Try 'Use Last Known Good Configuration' option.

If that doesn't correct the boot, then boot again to the boot menu's 'Safe Mode'. If you can boot into safe mode, then open terminal (DOS command line) and type fixmbr. Alternatively, or in addition, run chkdsk /f
Reboot.

Note that with chkdsk /f command you will be required to reboot. It will run some diagnostics, and check your HDD much like scandisk did on Microsoft Windows 98. The /f switch is to auto repair any damage that it might find. It will likely take about 10-20 minues.

If you are not connected to a an untrusted network and you never load untrusted programs from floppy nor CDROM / DVD, then consider turning off your antivirus completely.”

“Would now be a good time to plug SUSE Linux? :)”

“I've been experimenting with Slackware myself.”

““Call the Geek Squad!”
Wounded Knee
11:54:24 AM
11/02/05


Interesting thing about the Geek Squad...

Not too long ago Jon and I were at Best Buy. I was sending my camera in for a repair. The guy at the Geek Squad desk was helping me, but in the process was getting very frustrated because his computer was slow or was down or something. I commented that at least he's part of the Geek Squad and he or one of his associates should be able to fix it. He told me that they are not allowed to work on their own computers because of some contract with an outside vendor and Best Buy!!!! LOL”

“Interesting...sure tells you something about their computer skills. I get some of my best clients from people who tried to use the Geek Squad.”

“Anybody use broadband phone service & which co do you like best? Did you get rid of your telephone co phone?”

“I use Vonage over Cox high-speed cable internet and ditched my Qwest service. I kept my same phone number. I have had no complaints about the service. I'd be glad to give anyone a referral.
last edited: 11/16/05 6:50:21 PM”

“Looks like we need a new backup drive at work. The current drive was making funny noises so I ran a scan, which picked up some bad clusters. Hopefully we can get a replacement real soon.

I guess this isn't really a question.”

“Vonage over Verizon.
Got rid of phone service except very most basic hook-up (for the DSL).
Works awesome.
Call oversees on the cheap, Mugsy. Great quality.”

“I'm a total computer dork. I have never used Microsoft Outlook but I have it installed so I figured it was time to configure it (or so it tells me every time I try to send an email).

The first thing it is asking me is what type of server your email works with. WTF???? How do I find that out? My email address ends with an @sbcglobal.net if that helps.







(blushing) I feel so stupid.”

“Shoot....it's been so long since I set mine up that I can't remember. If I am correct you need to tell it (Outlook) that it has permission to access your SBC. Lemme see if I can find how mine is configured.”

“I think I found the settings now by going to the help section of SBC yahoo. But now it's telling me that my email address is incorrect. But it's not.

I'm so confused. And I shouldn't be because I'm not blonde anymore.”

“You shaved your head????? Now you'll look cool like me!


Your SBC account properties should tell you about your server properties for incoming and outgoing mail---where the hell are all the experts here??? That should be what you need to enter. Are you in a connection wizard?”

“Not shaved. Now I'm a redhead!

I figured out my server properties, whatever the heck that means. Entered it in the wizard. And voila! It started importing into my inbox! The very first email that showed up was one from you with your cell phone number. It was from right before the kids trip to Nordhouse Dunes. Ironic, huh?”

“Freaky!”

“Input all that stuff just like you mentioned, leo. It shows my inbox now, etc. But I get this error message:

Error tab:
Task 'POP3 - Receiving' reported error (0x80040900) : 'The server name you entered can not be found on the network (it might be down temporarily). Please verify that you are online and that the server name is correct.'

Tasks tab:
pop.sbcglobal.yahoo.com - sending completed
pop.sbcglobal.yahoo.com - receiving completed
POP3 - sending completed
POP3 - receiving errors


It's telling me to verify my email address, but I have and it's correct.

Now what?”

“One more question. If I read my mail by going to my sbc yahoo home page, will that update the mail as having been read or deleted in Outlook?”

“Are you using Outlook or Outlook Express? There is a difference.”

“There were a few bumps when I first did mine too and I still get messages like that periodically. I'd just close out and try it again maybe???”

“You're almost up to twenty questions which I believe is the limit.”

“Outlook 2003


How do I get another 20 questions? Can I buy you all a beer or two?”

“I'll drink to that.”

“Tonight I am serving Goose Island Christmas Ale or chianti or Maker's Mark. Help yourself!”

“Do have more than one server defined? That might cause the error you're seeing.”

“I'll check. How do I check that?”

“Hear hear...

Well, first of all POP3 is only meant to receive mail, not send it. POP3 functions by downloading and deleting from the server any incoming mail you have. To send mail you need to connect to an outgoing mail server, usually via SMTP. Try smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com.”

“Yah but a lot of systems have put their SMTP and POP3 server on the same machine. I use BellSouth and they changed to that configuration about a year ago.”

“Well, I don't have Outlook right in front of me so I can't tell you. I only have Outlook Express at home, and it only allows you to have one account defined. But poke around the menus in Outlook and see if you can find something like a list of servers or accounts.”