Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with troubleshoot

Why won't my in-line Word images stay put?

Breav — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:34:34 -0800

I am a very frequent user of MS-Word, right now Word 2003. I routinely drop pictures into text documents, selecting the layout option "in line with text". I have inherited a document with wonky picture behavior, where putting a picture in-line makes most or all of it disappear. The document originator seems to have temporarily solved by floating all of the pictures over loads of paragraph marks, which is un-elegant and will not please my learned client. My mad Google skills have failed me for an explanation. I have tried everything from monkeying with the advanced layout (Picture Position) settings to lowering the acceleration on my graphics card, all to no avail. (Virtually) all suggestions will be cheerfully tried.

Is there a fix for this dual monitor issue?

mephesta — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:58:07 -0800

If I turn on my secondary which is connected to a DVI to HDMI adapter and then turn it off it disconnects my primary which is connected via VGA. I have my Panasonic Plasma hooked up to my Nvidia graphics card through a DVI to HDMI adapter. My monitor is hooked in via the VGA port on the same card. I am trying to use the monitor as my primary and the television as the secondary. If i leave the television off when booting up, my monitor works fine. When I turn on the TV they both work just fine. However if I turn the TV off, I hear the device unplug sound that windows makes as if I disconnected a USB drive. Then my monitor goes black and loses the signal. I can only regain the use of my monitor by turning the TV back on. I have tried several combination's of booting with just the TV on or both off, etc. This is really inconvenient and I was hoping there is a fix, I know I have used this setup before and it has been fine but since I reformatted a few months ago the issue has been constant.

Any help will be extremely appreciated! I won't be able to thank you enough.

PC specs in case they are needed.
Mobo: Gigabyte EP45-DS3L
Proc: Intel Q6600
Ram: 4gigs DDR2-800
Graphics: Nvidia 8500GT 512mb (latest drivers installed)
OS: Tried on XP x86, Vista x64, Windows 7 x64
Currently using vista x64

Noooo! Your trypical Macbook Pro crash story.

drpynchon — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:57:43 -0800

OS X crisis.. Please help with a system that won't boot Mac gurus. So I finally got around to installing the last security update to OS X 10.4.11 on my MBP (C2D) and after reboot my system hangs. It sits there on the grey apple screen and spinning thingy. The interweb reports that this is not uncommon so I followed the typical advice of loading Disk Utility off install DVD. Ran, found some glitches in the permissions and disk and repaired them successfully. It can see and mount the drive as well as report the free space and all that. Still a no go -- again hanging on the boot screen as my fan starts to whirl.

Considered Archive and Install but after selecting my hard drive volume and the Options button, it reports that it can't perform A&I and must erase the contents of the drive. GAH!

This sucker has some seriously important work that was recently completed on not yet backed up. Help me restore and I will be indebted to you forever.

Microsoft Exchange Hates Me

Zeker — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:15:45 -0800

We have Microsoft Outlook set to send emails via a POP3 service, but our old Exchange 5.5 server keeps trying to take over when we don't want it to. First the setup:

Our company's Exchange 5.5 server is having too many issues shaking hands with other email servers and has been blacklisted too many times, so we're deciding to take it down and set all our employees on POP3 mail, managed with Outlook (some on 2k2(xp), others on 2000) as a client.

We can't get rid of Exchange 100% as of now (though we will eventually) since a lot of our employees rely on the Global Address contacts, and some use the calendar for scheduling meetings and such. Until we devise a method for scheduling meetings/reminders and possibly keeping a centralized contacts list sans Exchange, we'll get rid of it. But as of now, this is the setup:

~Exchange 5.5 with internet email services disabled (but internal email enabled).
~100+ employees on Outlook 2000-XP(2002?)
~Outlook is set to retrieve internal mail and global contacts via Exchange
~Outlook is also set to send/receive POP3 mail as the primary send/receive source
~User's *.PST file is saved offsite their machine into another server
~Some OFFSITE employees were deleted from Exchange's Global Address list and placed instead on the user's local Contacts list. So all contacts in the local Contacts lists are offsite people.
~Our POP3 service provider allows us to keep the same domain name (***@company.com) on our POP3 that our Exchange server uses.

Now the problem:

Exchange is giving us hell by constantly trying to intervene on how the mail is sent. Even though we set Outlook to use POP3 as the primary send/receive account, AND even though we disabled the internet mail service on Exchange, Exchange tries to take over and send the email like a disgruntled mother-in-law, resulting in an "undeliverable" message from Exchange.

Now we realize that the Global Address list contains headers within the contacts that pertain to Exchange that would override our settings... but the local Contacts lists -created by yours truly- only contain the contact name and email address, and theoretically should not contain any exchange headers or reason for exchange to intercept our POP3's precious assignment.

Outlook 2002(xp) has an auto suggest feature that whimsically fills in the name of the contact you're typing. So the user is typing in Nancy (for example) and auto suggest returns "Nancy (e-mail)". Yay? Not so fast. Double click that entry and you find that it's got EXCHANGE all over the headers. So I deleted the auto-suggest cache file (*.nk2) from the user's local profile and the problem has disappeared. I can tell because auto suggest now gives us "Nancy (nancy@company.com)" instead of "Nancy (email)". So this issue is fixed... but only on people using Outlook XP(2002?).

I still have a ton of people on Outlook 2000 with a similar issue. This is a weird beast. There is no cache file I can delete (*.nk2) from what I know. Say we want to send something to Nancy again. We click the "To:..." button which brings us to our contacts selection screen. We go to the local contacts list, add Nancy, click ok, and now we're back at the main message screen, the "To:" field displaying "Nancy (email)". A double-click on this field takes me directly to the contact editor, which shows her name and email address correctly with no Exchange headers to be found. All good, right? But if I hit "Send" I get an "Undeliverable!" message with EXCHANGE ALL OVER IT OH GOD!!...

Now, we try again. We open up a new message, hit the "To:..." button. Get ready, this one's weird.... we go to the local Contacts list, select Nancy and hit the "To ->" button to add her as a recipient. If we double click her name in the "Recipients" box, (you ready for this?) instead of taking me to the contact editor like it did on the main message window, we see a window with bloody EXCHANGE all over the place, scrawled everywhere like blood in a
damned murder scene! I have NO IDEA where outlook is getting this info from or how to erase it.

Now, if I manually type in the recipient's email (nancy@company.com), POP3 happily does its thing without molestation. I really need help. If anybody can offer help and rescue me from a company lynching, it would be greatly appreciated.

New computer build--No signal input on monitor?

saguaro — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:55:42 -0800

I just cobbled together a computer for the first time, and while it powers up OK (fans and drives awhirring) I get nothing on the screen. No signal input. What did I mess up? Did I kill my CPU? I've got the monitor plugged into the onboard graphics card.

Here's the board: GIGABYTE GA-M61PME-S2 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 / nForce 430 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
and the CPU:
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Dual-Core Processor

Happy to produce any other relevant details. Please go easy, I'm not a total n00b, but close.
I appreciate your help, thank you in advance!

I don't want to call India again...

wastelands — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:27:09 -0800

Why does my DSL connection keep dropping connections? I have a DSL connection from Qwest. The last couple weeks, I have seen the following:

* My connection with a torrent tracker drops (red arrows in uTorrent)
* My connection with an IRC server drops several times a day
* Often my browser will take a long time to start downloading web pages... I have to try the address again to "reset" it, otherwise it will just spin for a long time

No major hardware or software changes, except for minor stuff like upgrading VLC player, installing Chrome, the usual software changes. (Note: I'm on XP SP3... relatively fresh install, a few months old)

Normally I'd bug my ISP, but the last time I did that, they gave me a rated-limited modem. So instead of getting 5 Mb/s down, I was getting a third of that, and uploads were also slower. So I'm sticking with my old, but trusty, DSL modem from 2006. Is it just crapping out?

Is there anything I can do? I've tried unplugging power from the modem, waiting a minute, and plugging back in. Tried rebooting the computer. My overall speed for download/upload is the same as always, but it just keeps dropping connections.

Any help is appreciated!

How to fix a computer with a blank screen?

banished — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:14:27 -0800

I have an HP Pavilion a1200y desktop. When you turn it on the monitor is blank, how can I fix this? All the fans are blowing and the machine seems to be working, I just get no picture. It's not the hard drive because I took that out and put it in a different machine to test it. It isn't the monitor because I tested that with a different machine too.

If it is a problem with the integrated video, can I just buy a cheap video card? What's the cheapest video card I can buy that is compatible with the HP Pavilion a1200y?

Suicidal because of memory problems with MS Vista OS

tosteka — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:47:08 -0800

Help me flip the switch that keeps my RAM freed up on my pain-in-the-backside MS Vista O/S machine! Bought a laptop, Acer Aspire 5610-4182, a very advanced machine with lots of RAM (2GB). But my new laptop would wouldn't run Adobe CS2 for my graphic design applications so I had to invest ANOTHER FBOMBING GRAND into Adobe CS3 Premium, which works for about a half a day at a time, but eventually all my RAM gets used up, even after I shut all other windows and close all other applications. The problem is that this one time Adobe Photoshop CS3 was the only program open, I had been working on a project for a while and just wanted to save it, and even though I closed everything, yes even all the other windows within photoshop, I didn't have enough RAM to save my only open file! What the FBOMB! I can't risking losing my changes and having to start over! MotherFBOMBING GREEDY FBOMBING BILL FBOMBING GATES YOU ARE FBOMBING KILLING ME CHEESE'N FBOMBING CRACKERS S-H-1-T! GOT ALL MUDDY!

So I'm watching my RAM %ages in the Task Mangler and I see that during the course of the day as I open and close files and programs my used RAM steadily climbs to 100% and never comes down even after I close everything!

So I got smart and I turned off the stupid FBOMBING supposedly intuitive SuperFetch and the other fetch crap too, but not even that has helped. CHEESE'NCRACKERS WHAT THE FBOMB AM I SUPPOSED TO DO I CAN'T KEEP REBOOTING ALL DAY TO GET MY MEMORY BACK DOWN! NOR CAN I DOWNGRADE TO XP CUZ I INVESTED A GRAND IN CS3!

SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME BEFORE THIS THING GOES IN THE FBOMBING FIREPLACE. I'M NEVER BUYING ANOTHER BILL GATES PRODUCT AGAIN EVER EVER EVER PERIOD! MICROSOFT IS THE DEVIL!

By the way I occasionally open MS Excel, which came bundled with MS Office XP, which I used with my old machine, but don't tell me Vista can't run Office XP that would be fbombing stupid. Please don't tell me that!

Trouble shoot a Sansa Clip for me

lassie — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:35:58 -0800

My girlfriend's Sansa Clip has suddenly developed a problem I can't fix. She uses it exclusively to download and listen to audiobooks from the Brooklyn Public Library website. Today, when she tried to download a book that she needs to listen to by tomorrow, she got an error message when she tried to transfer the file to her Sansa Clip. It says ""[Insert3] returned 0xC00D2779," and it occurs not when she downloads the book from the website to her computer, but when she then tries to transfer the book from her computer to her device using the Overdrive Media Console. I see that 0xC00D2779 seems to mean "The file could not be transferred because the device clock is not set," but this does not get me any closer to fixing the damn thing. Thoughts? Thanks.

Help troubleshoot video stalls on Windows XP

rockhopper — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:30:56 -0800

Help troubleshoot video stalls on Windows XP. Whether it's youtube or other video, my machine no longer let's me watch video to completion. I have sbc yahoo dsl.

AppleScript n00b needs troubleshooting help

electric_counterpoint — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:28:34 -0800

15-line AppleScript is giving this n00b nightmares. I think something's wrong with my "if ... then" syntax. What I'm trying to do (embarrassingly enough) is write a "Pay attention, blockhead!" script that will disable my Macbook's AirPort wireless card and re-enable it only upon correctly typing in an arbitrarily-long string of characters. Good for maintaining focus in lectures, y'know?

Anyway, here's what's I've got after teaching myself AppleScript for an hour and snatching several snippets: syntax-highlighted version, or Tiny Towne version below for future readers, after that link goes bad:



do shell script "scselect AirPort-Off" --This selects a network location for which I've disabled AirPort

set randphrase to {}

repeat (random number from 1 to 2) times --This loop generates the random phrase. It's set to give only a few characters now for testing purposes.

set end of randphrase to some item of "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890!@#$%^&*()"

end repeat

set alert_message to ("Airport:" & return & return)

set alert_message to alert_message & randphrase

display dialog alert_message default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon 1 --This shows the window with the challenge phrase and a text box

set userstypedphrase to text returned of the result

if randphrase = userstypedphrase then --This *should* reactivate wireless if the users' input is the same as the random phrase

	do shell script "scselect 0"

else if randphrase ≠ userstypedphrase then --But, this one comes up no matter what.

	display dialog "Wrong."

end if

So, basically, I'm trying to turn wireless off (this works), generate a random phrase (this works), bring up an input field (this works), and if the input matches the random phrase, turn wireless back on (this doesn't work). To troubleshoot, I've inserted a line, "display dialog userstypedphrase & return & randphrase," which confirms that the two variables are the same. But nevertheless, it always evaluates them as different, and takes the "else" fork.

What am I doing wrong here? I've scripted a few things before, so I thought I could handle this, but I just can't see how the two variables can't be made equal!

What's wrong with Ludwig's Van?

ludwig_van — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:46:13 -0800

Help me figure out what's wrong with my old crappy van. It's a 1992 Chevy conversion van (automatic transmission). The alternator and tensioner failed last week and I replaced them. I was driving it tonight and it was doing fine going 65 on the highway, but then when I exited it started getting stuck in a low gear and refusing to shift to the next one, so I couldn't accelerate past 20. But then it would work normally for a few minutes at a time before getting stuck again, and so on as I drove home.

Can you tell what could be wrong with it, and estimate how much it should cost to fix?

Why can't I load certain web sites?

RDNZL — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:11:45 -0800

Why won't CNN's web site load? Sometime over the course of a week, CNN refuses to load from my home system. When I go there, it takes forever and finally a partial text-only version of the site loads. When I ping CNN.com, the request times out. Below is the tracert output. This is perplexing because I've had the same setup for four years. I'm running a fully patched version of Windows XP Pro, DSL connection going through a Linksys WRTG router (pretty standard stuff). Any ideas on where to start looking? Thanks!

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\MyMachine>ping www.cnn.com

Pinging www.cnn.com [64.236.91.21] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.236.91.21:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Documents and Settings\MyMachine>tracert www.cnn.com

Tracing route to www.cnn.com [64.236.91.21]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms adsl-68-20-31-254.dsl.chcgil.ameritech.net [64.21
31.50.254]
3 9 ms 7 ms 7 ms dist1-vlan50.chcgil.ameritech.net [64.21
31.50.254]

4 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms bb1-g7-0.chcgil.ameritech.net [151.164.242.208]

5 9 ms 8 ms 8 ms ex2-p1-0.eqchil.sbcglobal.net [151.164.191.250]

6 8 ms 8 ms 7 ms pop1-chi-P4-1.atdn.net [66.185.151.217]
7 201 ms 207 ms 202 ms bb2-chi-P0-0.atdn.net [66.185.141.86]
8 28 ms 28 ms 29 ms bb2-vie-P14-0.atdn.net [66.185.152.215]
9 219 ms 209 ms 212 ms pop1-vie-P2-0.atdn.net [66.185.139.83]
10 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms dar1-mtc-S3-0-0.atdn.net [66.185.139.134]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.

Why won't anything but Google load?

imposster — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 08:01:13 -0800

Laptop connected to DSL via Linksys WRT54G - Connected by ethernet = no problem. Connected wirelessly = only www.google.com will load. A few more details:
Laptop - Dell Inspiron 2200, Win XP (SP2)

Also, I have two other computers that connect fine: one via ethernet and one via wireless (a Dell Inspiron E1705 running Win XP (SP2)). Neither of these two computers have any problems accessing every webpage I have tried.

That would suggest it has something to do with the one laptop. It's running AVG, so I've turned off the firewall - pages still don't load. Windows firewall, on/off - pages still don't load. Ping? Google pings with no packets dropped. Every other website, host not found. DNS flushed. Temp files and internet options purged. What am I missing? (As I mentioned earlier, when I plug in the ethernet cable from the router, all pages load fine.)

Why is my Mac stalling?

mdbell79 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:03:33 -0800

My Intel Macbook is failing to boot past the gray Apple screen, just displaying the spinning progress icon forever. I'm still a Mac Newbie, so I could use some help. Any ideas on how to fix my Mac? My Macbook first started starting up slower than usual, and then freezing for long periods when coming out of sleep (accompanied by that infuriating spinning ball). Now it won't boot up at all, and I'm not familiar enough with Macs to figure this out. When I boot to the install disc, the Mac partition has a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it.

Things I've tried:

--Using Install Disc 1 to run Disk Utility
--Using Single-User Mode to run fsck
--Resetting the NVRAM and the SMC

Both Disk Utility and fsck report that the disc is OK.

Also, I've got Boot Camp and Windows XP installed and can boot into Windows without a problem, so there's nothing physically wrong. Is there a way to access my Mac partition from my Windows OS so that I can get my files off? If so, I'd be able to backup my most recent work and just reinstall OS X. Still, I'd rather fix the problem itself (and learn what's causing it). Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Help me revive a Western Digital hard drive

pantufla — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:15:22 -0800

Is there any way to get my western digital external hard drive to properly display the disappeared files & folders on it so that I can back them up? I've been backing up stuff to a Western Digital My book essential edition 500 GB drive for a few months now. It was working fine (under os 10.3.9), until I made the mistake of installing os 10.4 on my mac. Now the drive icon still appeared on the desktop, but when I double-clicked it to open it, the computer stopped responding. I then connected the drive to my xp laptop and ran the western digital diagnostic tool, which told me that the drive was functioning properly. After I ran that diagnostic, I could see what was on the drive (without freezing), but now the only thing present was a folder called "Folder.502" that was empty. Nonetheless, both the pc and the mac reported that about 200 GB was in use on the drive. I am moderately hopeful that the drive can be resurrected, but unsure as to how to resurrect it. I've been looking at data recovery services, and they cost in the thousands of dollars. Is there any way to get this drive to properly display the files & folders on it so that I can back them up?
Extra info: mac is a 5 yr old g4 867 Mhz, drive is connected by USB 1.0
Thanks!

My new macbook pro won't make any sound

MNDZ — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:18:40 -0800

My new macbook pro won't make any sound. My new macbook pro won't make any sound. It did, but at some point today something changed. Now there is no sound and when i try to adjust the volume with the keyboard i see the sound icon with a crossed out circle below. When i try to adjust in system preferences i am not able to grab the slider with the mouse. But it does make the startup sound when i restart. Does anyone know how to fix this? Or what setting has changed?

Fix my WinXP USB without the nuke from orbit option!

kdar — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:31:15 -0800

[WinXPfilter] What's wrong with my USB devices on my computer? I run a fairly old Athlon XP 2400+ on an Asus A7V-266-E motherboard, which uses a VIA K7 chipset, I believe. Windows XP (+ SP2 and fully updated) is my primary OS, and I have Linux installed on another partition, but I rarely use it as the machine has become more of a gaming box.

The issue started when I yanked out my USB smartphone (Cingular 2125) mid-a-bunch-of-things to take a call. My USB mic stopped working, and windows stopped being able to find drivers for it (despite the only "driver" being usbaudio.sys, included with XP SP2). My other USB devices, including my USB sound card, kept working, though, so I didn't pay it any mind until I tried to fire up Ventrilo and it wouldn't work. After lots of rejiggering ports and trying various installation options for new drivers, I decided that reinstalling the USB controller driver might help. I uninstalled and unplugged all USB devices and rebooted.

Now Windows can't even find the driver for my USB controller. I reinstalled my chipset drivers as well as the VIA-specific USB drivers, but I haven't seen anything. Keep in mind that before I uninstalled these from the device manager, all devices were working correctly (except the USB mic), so it's not a hardware problem. I'll be able to verify this after I get home and can boot up linux.

Anyone else been able to successfully solve something like this? Other forums' information is sketchy-at-best, so I'm leaving it to the geniuses here to figure out.

How do I increase my powers of reasoning?

dropkick — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:26:41 -0800

I've read a study that suggests individuals who live in perpetual poverty have impaired reasoning capabilities. Assuming this is true, how can I learn to reason better? What ways can I improve my ability to accurately assess situations and troubleshoot problems?

My Mac will not open .zip files with Stuffit expander. What does Error message 1 mean?

Jenna Roadman — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 02:26:12 -0800

I have some video .zip files that I have downloaded into Tiger desktop latest OS X. I then downloaded the latest version of Stuff it expander. I continue to get the error message: "Unable to unarchive "name of file" into "desktop". (Error 1 - Operation not permitted." What does this mean? I've looked in all the Mac help forums and can find nothing. Also, what do you think is the best place to get simple Mac help with quick responses?

Blinky the Laptop

TheGoldenOne — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 07:47:29 -0800

Laptop screen blackout issues: Sometimes my laptop screen will flicker black. Sometimes it will stay blacked out until I play with the angle of the screen, then it flickers a little more and eventually goes back to normal. What's going on here? Bad connection? Do I need to send it back from whence it came? If so, how do I back up everything?

-It's a new laptop. I got it in December. I've been gentle.

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot a scooter that, suddenly, no longer starts up?

avoision — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:10:51 -0800

My girlfriend has a 2006 Vespa scooter (still under warranty, less than a year old). Last night, it simply wouldn't turn over. No warning signs before this, no problems. Full tank of gas. I can hear it click, but the motor simply doesn't catch. I'm not much of a gearhead. Any suggestions on how we might troubleshoot this more ourselves, before we have it towed to a dealer? Any basic checks that we can do, before taking it in to the shop?

Can Windows be configured to combat processor-hogging applications?

stuckie — Wed, 03 May 2006 17:09:42 -0800

Is there a way to "reserve" a certain % of the processor for Windows, no matter how much any individual application requests? Lately, when opening a few tabs in FireFox, or a few web-sides GIFs in Photoshop, while having my email client, Trillian, and iTunes or Rhapsody open, every once in a while one of my applications decides to go rogue and demand 99% of the processor, causing incredible slowdowns in all other applications, including the OS.

My machine has a more-than-ample processor, 2gb of RAM, a nearly-fresh XP installation, and should be able to easily handle most all the programs I'd choose to open at any given time, but once one of the apps (not always the same one, btw) gets "greedy", I can barely "track" the mouse. I get 2-3 second delays between typing characters on the keyboard and when they appear on the screen. The steps it takes to open the Task Mangler take, on average, a full excrutiating minute, to find and kill the guilty process. Not to mention, this generates a lot of lost work.

One question is: is my condition unique? I'm not running beta software or sketchy shareware I would EXPECT periodic bug-induced freezing from. And is there any reason Firefox should require 50% of my processor, minimized, when it isn't DOING anything except holding on to a few static web pages? (Please don't say "get a Mac"; it's not an option in my case)

Anyway, the REAL point of this question is: Since I can't go to the programmers responsible for every application on my PC and ring some necks, is there a way I can tell Windows to max out the processor allocation it gives to any individual application, so at least if there IS a memory-hogging problem, the machine isn't so crippled trying to accomodate it that I can't troubleshoot the problem?

Preventing spontaneous rebooting in WinXP

327.ca — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:16:59 -0800

How can I prevent my system from crashing when I have hardware acceleration set to 'full'? I have a WinXP Pro desktop running on well-maintained hardware about 3 years old. The video adapter is an NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8x. The drivers are up-to-date (and non-beta). I find that I need to set Desktop-Properties-Settings-Advanced-Troubleshoot-"Hardware acceleration" to one setting below "full". (The help text for this setting says it should be used "to correct problems with the mouse pointer, or to correct problems with corrupt images.") If I use the "full" setting, my system spontaneously reboots 3-4 times a day. Usually, though not always, this will happen when I'm watching a video -- the mouse pointer changes into a garbage bitmap, freezes, and then the whole systems tips over. At the 'one-down-from-full' setting, it's stable.

I've used Driver Detective to make sure none of my other drivers are out of date. I'd like to play Counter-Strike on this machine and it bugs me that I'm not able to set hardware acceleration to the max.

Can you give me some advice on how to troubleshoot this further? Thanks!

Thinkpad T41 is possessed!

jadanzzy — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:28:30 -0800

Huge (hopefully not) monitor issue: Thinkpad T41. Are there any good hardware troubleshooters out there? In the last few days, my monitor's been acting up. I would not get a visual at all, like I turned the monitor off. But then I would push a certain part of the laptop in, and then it would flicker in and out.

I thought it may be an issue with the power adapter connection and a conflict hardware, because I unplugged it and then I got a visual again.

Just a few minutes ago, though, the visual started going crazy. The visual started getting fuzzy in a horizontal way and was shaking back and forth, like it was some effect. I unplugged my laptop and then it stopped. Plugged it back in and it started doing it again.

Ok so it's an issue with my cord. Any help please?? My knowledge with computers stops here with hardware malfunction.