Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with troubleshooting

This toothsome tart won't tighten up.

liketitanic — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:21:24 -0800

Help me troubleshoot this savory tart recipe. So it has become an xmas tradition in the titanic-filter household to have this goat cheese, polenta, and mushroom tart for breakfast before the tossing of wrapping paper commences.

But I can never get the tart to set quite right and I'm not sure why. The directions say that for one prepared cup of polenta (implying that that's how much you need), you should prepare one dry cup of polenta . . . except you end up with about 3 cups. People have noted this in the recipe comments and say that the tart doesn't quite set with either one OR three cups polenta. I usually use 3, and there's so much melty stuff in the mix that I can't imagine one cup would be enough to bind it. But I can't get it to firm up and it tends to be more like a pudding. Which is still delicious, but still.

The best I can think to do is let it cool completely, chill to firm, then reheat, but then I have to make it the night before while I have eggnog brain. Ideas?

(It's delicious, you will love it.

Internet trouble in Hong Kong

brozek — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:17:33 -0800

Why might I be having trouble uploading/downloading in Hong Kong? I'm visiting Hong Kong for a week, and I seem to be having some troubling uploading and downloading. My internet connection seems fine and I can read websites and text e-mail without any trouble. I'd like to be able to send some photos home, though, and here's where I'm running into an odd problem. Any time I hit Attach, my browser freezes (both Firefox and IE) with no error message. I tried other e-mail programs, as well as some websites (imageshack, wordpress, etc), and having the same problem. In a similar vein, there's an e-mail attachment that I need to read, but I'm having a similar problem - anything I do to save it results in my browser freezing. Basically, any time I try to upload or download, I have to close and restart my browser.

I checked with other folks on the trip, and I seem to be the only one running into this issue. Any help would be fantastic - thanks!

Why do large file downloads stall (with no error message or any feedback)?

bradn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:49:42 -0800

Why do large file downloads stall (with no error message or any feedback)? I am not sure how to troubleshoot this.

Pertinent info: Win7 (also had the problem with previous OS, Server 2008), Firewall disabled, Gigabyte motherboard with LAN (Nforce 570 SLI), Asus router with DD-WRT installed behind an AT&T U-verse 2Wire RG.

I can't seem to download a large file. Anything in the single MBs is fine, but larger files stall out in both Firefox and IE. The progress meter remains still, "x minutes remaining -- xx of xx MB (xx KB/sec)" remains still, no error message or timeout of any kind. It will stay this way for days. Incedentally, there is no issue with torrent downloads in Vuse. I am also having trouble with Netflix Watch Instantly (via WDTV Live) giving me "Your internet connection has slowed" errors, and think that it might be related.

I did a few random trials: Foxit Reader (5.1MB) downloaded fine. Batman Arkham Asylum Demo (2.0 GB) currently stalled at 62.9MB, and two attempts at XBMC for Windows (81.1MB) stalled at 25.9 and 26.7.

I tried disabling the firewall and AVG antivirus. I updated the Nforce drivers.

Any other ideas?

Need. Internet. Back.

Beardman — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:57:33 -0800

Why can't I connect to the internet anymore? Is customer service giving me a plausible explanation? Our home internet connection has been down all weekend. We use a new and speedy 24" iMac. When we try to connect to PPPoE, it just says "Connecting...Connecting...Connecting" and finally says that it can't connect to the server. No amount of power cycles and restarts make a difference. This has happened once before, a few months ago, and changing the access password with the ISP solved the problem (until Friday).

Our apartment sucks and there is only one working phone jack, which is in an inconvenient location. Thus, we run a 15 foot phone cord from it to a normal telephone cord splitter, from which a 10 foot (filtered) telephone cord goes to the modem, and a second cord goes to our telephone.

Yesterday, my ISP's customer service guy said that the phone cord from the wall to the modem has to be 6 feet or less, or else it'll be unreliable. He correctly surmised that we often have connection issues (i.e. sometimes it says "Authenticating..." for a long time), although never before recently has it totally failed to connect, and for a couple of years we never even had the long authentication issue either.

When I told him that this issue has previously been solved by a password change, he tried that again and it didn't solve the problem. I asked him why, if the cord length is the issue, we were able to have the same setup for years without a problem. He replied that the cord can deteriorate over time.

Various forums online debate whether the length of the phone cord has anything to do with internet speed or connection reliability. Does it? Could the problem be that I'm using that splitter? Does it matter where the splitter is--i.e. should the splitter only be at the wall jack, or can I have it where it is, after the first 15 foot cord? Should I do as my ISP suggests, and either (1) replace the telephone cords that go to the modem with new ones (to solve the supposed "deterioration" problem), or (2) try to rig it up with a 6 foot cord and then a really long ethernet cable (to solve the supposed "long phone cord" problem)?

Thanks for any advice you can give me. FYI, this is in Toronto, and the ISP is Primus. (I would rather switch to Teksavvy, but when I put my number into their website it says they can't provide service to me, even though I live right downtown...?)

I'll show you not valid

shothotbot — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:34:18 -0800

Lightroom is not cooperating with my external hard drive. Here is my tale of woe.

Windows XP, SP3, Lightroom 2.5.

External hard drive starts acting funny. Round here we expect hard drive failure, so I order a new drive and when it arrives copy the backup onto the new drive. The new drive has the same drive letter as the old one, but not the same name.

When I try to open a catalog by double-clicking on the .lrcat file I get: "The temporary file path is not valid. Lightroom cannot start." The catalogs seem to be fine, as when I open lightroom directly, not by clicking the .lrcat file, catalogs look normal. If I copy the lrcat file to my internal hard drive it opens. If I create a new catalog on the external drive I get the same problem. If I create a new .lrcat file on the internal hard drive it behaves normally.

I have tried removing lightroom and reinstalling, but it did not ask for a serial number on the re-install so I am guessing there is something in the registry which did not get wiped out, but I am not sure.

I am sure I am pretty confused.

Why don't my proxies work anymore?

msbrauer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08:00 -0800

Why have my proxies (Privoxy and GAppProxy) suddenly quit working? I'm using an up-to-date Vista installation. I use proxies periodically to get past China's Great Firewall. In the past, a strategy of Tor (by means of Vidalia/Privoxy/Torbutton) and GAppProxy (through FoxyProxy, set up using these instructions). I never use the two at the same time, i.e. if I'm using Tor, I'm not using GAppProxy, and vice versa. When I was last in China, in July, I had been using this setup for a few months with no problems.

I've just returned to China, and after a day or two of flawless operation, both proxies have quit working. To clarify, both proxy setups manage to get past the Great Firewall and transfer data. However, within a few seconds of data transfer through the proxy, I get a message from windows stating, "Privoxy has stopped working" or "HTTP Proxy. 127.0.0.1:8000 has stopped working" in the case of GAppProxy. Privoxy is running on port 8118.

Restarting the computer or the proxies doesn't solve the problem. Running one without the other doesn't solve the problem. Is there a possibility that something other than my computer is causing the problem, perhaps new strategies used by the Great Firewall spike the proxy somehow? The proxies remain operational if they are not in use, which is to say, if I start Privoxy or GAppProxy and don't transfer data through them, the services run with no problem.

While I haven't installed any internet-using programs in the week I've been back in China, since I didn't use the proxies for two months while outside of China, I can't be sure that the problem is a result of new conditions.

How can I troubleshoot this problem?

Sleep that's too deep

umbú — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:50:00 -0800

Why can't my Macbook Pro wake from a coma? I have a Macbook Pro 2.4 ghz pre-unibody 17” with 4 gb of RAM running Leopard (10.5.2 I think? 10.5.something). I’m having trouble getting my computer to start up from a sleep-like mode, and I’m not sure what has caused the problem, so here are the possible factors:

1. Since I bought the computer a year and a month ago, the graphics card had been malfunctioning intermittently. Sometimes when I would scroll, the screen would stutter, leaving a trail of whatever I was scrolling. Other times, when I played a video, squares of video would flicker, missing.

So I sent it in (I have Applecare, luckily), and 5 days later, they had replaced both the logic board, and some connector for the battery, which I hadn’t asked them to do. Ever since, there have been moments that the computer doesn’t recognize that there is a battery in it, which is odd, because even when the little battery with an x icon was present, the computer didn’t immediately shut down when I unplugged the AC adaptor.

2. A was doing a video editing project recently that took up way more hard disk space than I expected. There was one point when I received the warning “Your startup disk is almost full.” When I got this warning, I immediately shut down, booted up again, and transferred 30 gb to an external hard drive.

3. I started to have trouble waking the computer from sleep, but I could always hard boot by shutting the computer down holding the power key for a few seconds, and then rebooting. I wondered whether something was wrong with the sleepimage, so I turned off safesleep (hibernation) mode through the console using the instructions in this link.

4. That fix worked for a couple of weeks. Then, the other day, I took my computer out of my bag, and to my horror, it had been turned on with the lid closed for what I assume was an hour or two. Either it never went to sleep, even though I closed the lid, or it spontaneously woke up with the lid closed in my bag. The fan was going full throttle, and the screen was still on. I turned the computer off, let it cool down, and then later when I started it up again, it seemed fine.

5. Then, by accident, with safesleep still disabled, I let the battery on the computer completely drain. After that, even though I recharged the battery completely, when I try to boot up, I hear the beginnings of the process (the optical drive engaging, for one) and the sleep light goes on, but the screen never does anything. I’ve tried to use a flashlight on the screen to see if there was any activity, but as far as I can tell, nothing is happening. Target disk mode, safe boot, external hard drive boot, zapping the pram don’t change anything.

6. Another thing that I feel I should mention is the fact that I’ve been using the Freedom freeware program, which I assume affects the network preferences temporarily to block all internet connections while you’re using it. I include this because, based on what I’ve read on-line, a couple possible causes of this problem could be this one—that waking from sleep gets messed up if a certain system program isn’t present—or this one, in which somehow ethernet preferences being messed up causes the problem.

What do those of you who know about these things think? What should I do?

Does Not Compute

owtytrof — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:13:06 -0800

Please help me diagnose this PC issue. Long story inside. I cannot pin down exactly what's wrong with my PC. Here's what I've gone through so far:

The PCI-eX16 slot on my motherboard died. On-board video worked, but my current and previous video cards had no video output. I replaced the motherboard and also the case because my old case was getting pretty busted.

After I got the PC running again, there would be graphic corruption and freezing when running The Sims 3. I noticed an occasional loud click followed by a few seconds of silence when accessing one of my hard drives. Crap. I hastily backed up everything on there that wasn't already, removed the drive from the system, and reinstalled Windows on my other drive.

Since then I'm getting intermittent freezing. No blue screens or restarts, the system just hard locks. Sometimes, but not every time, when this happens, there won't be any video output after restarting. When this happens, un- and re-plugging the power cord restores the video output. No graphic corruption this time. Here are the most common situations where it has locked up:
Playing The Sims 3(other games may produce the same result, I haven't tried)
Burning an audio cd
Reading some video dvds, does not seem title specific - the same DVD may be read one time and freeze the next

Otherwise, I've left the machine up and running for days at a time with no problem, unless I try to do the above actions. Reading data DVDs or audio/data CDs, and burning data DVDs or data CDs works fine.

I ran memtest86+ overnight(about 6.5 hours) on Thursday, which completed 10 full tests and returned no errors. Last night I ran prime95 for about 2 hours, ran The Sims 3 for about 30 - 45 minutes using a save with a large family and a lot going on, rebooted using the Ultimate Boot CD and ran the CPU stress test for about 3 hours before deciding to launch prime95 again and go to bed. This morning when I got up, I turned the monitor back on and the machine had frozen about 15 minutes after I went to bed. I had a temp monitoring program running that showed the CPU temp at 52C when it froze. I also kept an eye on it when running The Sims 3 earlier in the evening and it never exceeded 55C, which is warm but not extreme. The GPU never exceeded 65C, which is well under the 100+C max temp the manufacturer has on the specs.

Specs:
ASUS M3N72-D motherboard
AMD Athlon 64X2 5000+
2 gig Corsair XMS pc6400 RAM
160 IDE Samsun HDD
640 eSATA external storage
IDE TSSCorp DVD burner
eVGA NVidia GeForce 9600GSO 512MB
450W PSU
Viewsonic 19" widescreen LCD
nothing is overclocked

Any suggestions are welcome.

Seeking a permanent solution for my Wacom tablet woes.

iamkimiam — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:09:30 -0800

Sometime around the beginning of this year, my Intuos2 Model 0608-U 6"x8" Wacom tablet driver stopped loading upon login and restart. I reinstall it every time I login/restart. All of the tips, tricks, workarounds suggested by both Wacom and Apple do not work. I am running Mac OS 10.5.7. Is there anything left to try? The tablet works after I reinstall. I have tried uninstalling, disk repair, permissions, reinstalling (various versions of the tablet driver) in all possible combinations. Is anybody else having this problem? What has worked for you?

I'm looking for a permanent solution that does not cost $$. I will reinstall indefinitely if I have to, but it is getting tiresome. Thanks!

Borked computer will not run utilities

Breav — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:25:45 -0800

What if it's so borked it won't run Spybot? My SO's Sony Vaio laptop will not completely boot windows xp. He has been running anti-virus and such in safe mode, including McAfee and CCleaner. So far neither adaware (will not update definition file), Spybot (will not install properly nor run from flash), nor clamwin (will not install definitions file) will run successfully, suggesting something in there doesn't want to be fixed.

Is this a hijacking or am I paranoid? Is this normal safemode behavior? What does the hive suggest next?

Joomla giving a blank page, but why?

asciident — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:03:43 -0800

Joomla filter: Got a blank page after editing text of a module, but why? My WoW guild's website is hosted on a site that uses Joomla and preset templates. Most everything is relatively locked down and the highest any of us can get (including the site/domain owner) is Administrator, not Super Administrator.

So today I was editing the text inside one of the modules with the WYSIWYG editor, nothing fancy or out of the ordinary. I save the text. Suddenly our site is giving blank pages. I have done an extensive bit of Googling on the problem, but 3 things stand out as out of the ordinary when it comes to this problem: a) working with Joomla 1.0.15, not 1.5 and not attempting to upgrade it, b) the administrator panel/site continues to work correctly, while the front-end and forums are giving blank pages, and c) the page source is not completely gone, but rather cuts off in the middle of the head section.

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on here? Since I'm not the site owner or the one paying for the hosting, it's not possible for me to contact the host (wowguilds.ca) directly and ask them what's up -- they wall off their support. I can't find anything that matches these details in searching Joomla problems, but maybe my Google-fu is weak here. The person who actually paid for the domain and hosting is kind of hard to contact at the moment, so if I can solve this myself it would be a huge relief.

Things I've tried: "unpublishing" the module I edited before this happened, unpublishing everything, republishing the things that were enabled before.

[ Home Networking Filter ] Why must I restart my wireless router every hour? Or, what am I doing wrong in the implementation of my home network?

platosadvocate — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:33:31 -0800

[ Home Networking Filter ] Why must I restart my wireless router every hour? Or, what am I doing wrong in the implementation of my home network? So, I've got a home network that's somewhat complicated. It's composed like this:

Cable Modem -> Router #1 (Wired only) -> Router #2 (Wireless)

The household has a few devices that utilize the internet connection via ethernet cables from Router #1. We also have anywhere from 1 - 5 home computers (Both Windows & Mac), as well as an iPhone, connecting to the network via wireless connection through Router #2.

You might be asking yourself at this point, "Why the two routers?" This is a great question, and I believe it is an attempt to create a barrier between the IP addresses of the computing devices in the household from the internet as a whole. From how its been explained to me, the IP address of the devices are masked in this fashion by utilizing an IP address externally that is different from what is utilized in the home network internally. (Bonus points: Can you tell me if this is an effective course of action?)

As the title of the post suggests, our devices have trouble retaining a functioning connection with the internet. At some point in our usage, we will notice that data transfer stalls (web pages fail to load, downloads fail, etc), and although the wireless functions of our devices report a connection to the wireless router (and the IP address obtained via DHCP (automatically) is the same as the beginning of our respective sessions), it seems no data is being actually relayed to our machines.

Can you tell me what is happening inside our home network? Too many devices (and is there a limit to how many devices can wirelessly access a network at any given time)? Help a thoroughly confused Metafilter junkie!

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to read and contemplate our predicament!

Powerbook: No Logo

DiscourseMarker — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:41:28 -0800

Powerbook G4 won't boot up. I hear the chime, get a gray screen, but NO apple logo or spinning wheel. This is a circa- late 2003 1.25GHz PB running OS 10.5. something. Yesterday, my husband was trying to open some Word 2008 docs he had saved on this laptop. Word would not open, it just kept bouncing in the dock, and we could not get it to force quit, so he did a forced shut down of the computer. Ever since then I cannot get the computer to boot past the gray screen.

I have tried resetting the PRAM, but it still sticks at the gray screen, same with resetting the PMU and trying a safe boot. It never progresses to the Apple Logo, just stays on the gray screen. When I pressed my ear to the keyboard I heard a few clicks from the HD after trying to start up, but now there's no sound.

Any suggestions?

Latency? This. Is. Infiniteloop!

selfnoise — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:28:23 -0800

Help me try and fix my mother's weird internet/Mac Mini issue. So, my mother has a Mac Mini. This is one of the older PowerPC ones... no wireless. It's connected via a cat5 cable to a ZyXel wireless router, which is then connected to a DSL modem. The problem she has is a delay between requesting a webpage and having it start to load (in any web browser). Since I am a Windows user, I don't know much about Macs, so I am at a loss.

Pertinent factoids:

-When I go to dslreports.com and run a speed test, I get a latency of between 500-900ms, which seems really high.

-When I ping google.com from within OS X's network dialog, however, the latency looks normal.

-My netbook and another Windows PC can connect wirelessly without this issue. I also connected my netbook to the router using the same cat5 cable; no issue.

-I tried setting the DNS servers to opendns instead of the default; no change.

Apparently the system did not originally have this issue. Any ideas?

Pimp my CSS please. Before I kill myself.

miss lynnster — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:34:41 -0800

I'm a designer and usually people do programming for me. I'm trying to teach myself how to customize Word Press themes all by myself though... and I thought I was doing pretty well. But then I had people look at it in other browsers. Yuck. Apparently it loads slowly for other people at times, the slideshow doesn't go all the way across, just all sorts of crap. I tried to do verification and there are a bunch of errors. I need to figure this out and move on!

I just really don't know how to fix any of these things. I was already proud of myself just for figuring out how to do the new stuff I've already done. My head hurts.

Can you help?

Oh, and the theme I customized for this was "Modularity" by Graph Paper Press.

Heal my flightless Thunderbird

prefpara — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:16:18 -0800

I just installed Thunderbird and added my gmail account. Thunderbird only wants to "get" about 100 emails at a time. I have many thousands of emails. Is there any way to make Thunderbird get all of my emails in one go? I don't want to sit here pressing "get mail" indefinitely. Additional pipe dream: is there any way to "get" my chats?

Google's services don't work in a specific way

msbrauer — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:30:10 -0800

Why aren't most google services working for me and why do the error pages look identical in firefox, chrome, and IE8? For about a week most google services have stopped working for me. Oddly, I get identical error messages that look like this in all three browsers on my computer (firefox, chrome, and IE8 in Windows Vista) as well as on Mac with Safari in OSX. By identical, I mean that the layout, font, and wording is exactly the same. I am in China, so this may be related to the Great Firewall, but I don't think so. As a comparison, here's an image of the error page I get when trying to view youtube (which is currently blocked in China): firefox, chrome, IE8. While the error is the same in those 3 screenshots, the browsers display them differently.

This behavior happens with all www.google.com/* services that I can remember, but gmail (www.gmail.com redirecting to mail.gmail.com) doesn't exhibit the problem.

"In laymen's terms we'd recommend not turning it off."

stelas — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:16:09 -0800

An LG 22' widescreen monitor, a few months old and seemingly not overheating or failing thanks to the computer, shuts itself off and won't come back on without a power cycle. I'd like to avoid returning it to base if possible. I've owned an LG 22 inch W2242P since February, with absolutely no problems. Last night, while casually sitting at my PC, the monitor powers down into something like a power save mode - the power button is still lit, but doesn't do anything when I push it, none of the menu buttons do anything, and there's no 'LOST SIGNAL' indicator on the screen.

My first thought's to check all the leads - they're fine, no evidence of problems. Power leads are fine, I jiggle all the display leads for good measure, I reset the computer, nothing. The back of the monitor isn't hot, but I give the vents a bit of dusting down just in case. Upon unplugging the monitor from the mains for half a minute and replacing it I get a signal and everything seems to work fine, but turning off the monitor from the power button sets it right back to the 'powered down' state and seems to be non-transient and reproducable.

I haven't tested this at length, not wanting to keep powering the thing on and off unduly, and haven't been able to say for sure if it still powers off randomly. I'd like to get any ideas from people who have encountered this or might know why it's happening, though, as not being able to turn it off at night is quite bad enough. LG's first and only response was 'get a technician to take it away and in the meantime just use the power button, dummy' but I'd rather not lose my only monitor for a while.

Freeing my games of artifacts

flatluigi — Thu, 14 May 2009 08:20:49 -0800

Help! My games are being plagued with screen artifacts. In several of the games I've been playing (Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Hitman: Blood Money) after a few minutes of gameplay "glitches" appear on the screen. These glitches look like small patches of green and sometimes purple that appear on the world geometry and disappear after a few milliseconds. If I keep playing, the glitches appear more and more frequent until I can't stand to play any more.

Interestingly enough, Source games like TF2, L4D, HL2, and Portal don't seem to be affected at all.

My system:

Manufacturer: VIAK8T
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3800+, ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Hard Drive: 500 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7000) (7000.winmain_win7beta.081212-1400)

Is my TiVO modem fried?

Joe Beese — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:43:58 -0800

Is my TiVO modem fried? With increasing frequency, the many year old beast runs out of guide information. Now it will not connect to any of the local numbers during the "Getting Program Info" sequence.

I would assume it's the well-documented fragility of the modem. However, it does connect during the initial "Getting Setup Info" sequence.

Does that prove anything? Is this a good enough reason to lay out $280 for a hi-def TiVO?

How do I connect my wireless laptop to the internet by cable?

mammary16 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:11:44 -0800

I'm having issues connecting my laptop to the internet. Wireless is fine, but I can't connect by cable at all. I own a T60 thinkpad with Windows XP that I've used entirely for wireless internet access. I've moved to a place (Warsaw, PL) where the internet connection is only by cable. I don't see the connection showing up anywhere in Network Connections.

The cable is plugged in, and the light is on (a steady green light) but I can't access the internet at all. I've been unlucky finding the solution to my problem online so I thought I'd check with the hivemind on this one.

I don't see any ethernet-type hardware attached to my computer (just my wireless card - "11a/b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Express Adapter"). Is it possible my ethernet card is damaged? I don't receive any error messages of any sort - it's just that nothing happens when I plug my computer in.

I am currently on my friend's T61 thinkpad, which connects effortlessly when I plug the cable in. So I know the connection itself works. His network device is listed as "Intel(R) 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection". I haven't had luck figuring out what the correct device for my T60 should be.

If you have any follow-up questions I'll be checking this page often. Thanks!

I hope AskMe 120389 has replies within the specified period

Gyan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:34:40 -0800

My replacement hard drive went bad after just one day. I think the motherboard's the culprit. Need informed opinions. Long story follows--> Computer X (mobo G31M-S2L) had two hard drives A & B. A's first partition has XP SP2. B's first partition had "Program Files" (due to a custom XP install that went not quite as intended). About a month back, two things started happening: 1)Opening the Explorer replacement file manager started taking some time (30 secs), as opposed to happening almost immediately. 2)I started getting random but infrequent BSOD for "Page fault in non-paged area". So I ran a few passes of Memtest86+ and found no errors. I also successfully ran the CPU stress test included in the handy boot CD I had. I never had an application crash on me during some intensive task or otherwise. So I looked up the logs and found a huge number of errors coded 9 & 7 (ideport timeout & bad block). I connected HDD B to another SATA connector using a new cable, but the errors persisted. So I ran full diagnostics on both drives using the manufacturer's utilities. As expected, A (Hitachi) showed no errors and B (Seagate) showed quite a few errors. I asked my dealer to get B replaced under warranty. Its replacement C arrived day before yesterday. In the interim, X ran fine without any hiccups i.e. no BSOD or temporary freezes..etc. First thing I did upon getting C was run SeaTools Long Test, just like with B. No errors. So that night, I started to backup data from A onto C, so I could perform a proper reinstall of XP after repartitioning A. At first, the copying progressed smoothly, but then events similar to with B recurred. A 700 MB file would start copying normally at 32MB/s, but would stop in the middle for 10 seconds and then resume copying without further halts. Some files would copy at under 1MB/s. After one batch of files had been copied, I decided to copy them back from B onto some temp space on A and unsurprisingly I got CRC errors on quite a few but not all. I ran SeaTools Long again and this time 26 'errors' showed up (and were reported as repaired successfully). Surprised that an apparently error-free HDD should go bad so soon, I placed C in computer Y and played around with transferring data to & fro. After shuffling about 100+ GB, there's been no hint of error.

I arrived at the inference that the new HDD C isn't bad after all, and probably neither was B (in the initial stages atleast). I should point out that I checked SMART periodically and never has it been reported as tripped by A, B or C.

So, I see the possibilities as

1)problem with XP drivers (unlikely, since B was working fine before)
2)problem developed in the motherboard (most likely)
3)the new drive C is indeed bad of its own craftmanship.
4)power supply problems in X (unlikely; the other drive or devices have never shown a problem)

Luser can't get five-year-old Russian video game to work on his four-year-old computer.

Scattercat — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:56:41 -0800

Okay, so after the mention and the link to the review of Pathologic, I decided that a depressing Russian game sounded awesome and downloaded it. (Yes, I paid for it. Not that you asked.) However, as is usual when I try to do something interesting on the computer, I find out there is a problem. It says that it can't start up because it can't find "Open AL 32 dll," that sound will not be enabled, and that the renderer cannot start. I do not know if these are related problems or not. (As far as I'm concerned, a computer is basically a Black Box.) I did some Googling and found several skeezy-looking sites which want me to run their scanning software and download the file I need "FOR FREE." As a proud owner of all of my current frontal lobes, I find this deeply suspicious.

Anyone know what the heck my missing file does and where I can find a non-sketchy copy? Any possible assistance with troubleshooting?

(I would gladly provide my computer's specs once someone tells me where I can find them. I know it has well more than the minimum recommended hard drive speed and RAM, but I have no earthly idea what kind of sound or video card I possess.)

How do I stop the stalling?

Seeba — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:11:38 -0800

Allright-- my windows (Vista) is funky: can I fix this without reinstalling? More inside. First, the specs:
Windows Vista, AMD9500 Phenom processor, 4GB RAM, HD2400XT graphics card, and 500GB hard drive, 200GB used (plus an external HD, mouse, keyboard, webcam, monitor, all that jazz)

Now, the problem:

Starting about two weeks ago, whenever I move a file, the "Moving X file(s): Y MB/GB, Z Seconds Remaining" pop-up shows up. As it gets to "0 Seconds Remaining", it just stalls.

Whenever I delete a file, the pop-up "Deleting X file(s): Y MB/GB, Z Seconds Remaining" shows up. As it gets to "0 Seconds Remaining", it stalls.

Anytime I move a file on my internal hard drive, the same thing happens. "Moving X file...." etc.

I haven't touched my registry (to my knowledge), or screwed with my internals any more than changing the "Hibernate/Sleep after X Minutes" or the screen saver in several months.

Whenever this happens, I open the task manager (Ctrl/Alt/Del), hit "End Program" a few times, then the window opens up to let me close and restart windows explorer. So I do. And then life goes on as usual.

Anyone have any idea what's wrong/how I fix this?
(Preferably without reinstalling my op system)

Thank you!

ohshitohshitohshitohshit

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:40:32 -0800

Why won't my computer post? About a year ago I built this computer. It died a month ago, and I thought it was the video card. The card was replaced under warranty. I popped the new card in the system this morning and was disappointed to find that it's still not posting.

When I press the power button, the fans spin, and everything seems normal for about the first 3-4 seconds, then it just shuts off before a video signal is ever sent to the display. About 4 seconds later, it starts again, fans spin for 3-4 seconds, and then it dies. This repeats indefinitely until I kill the power by flipping the master switch on the back of the power supply.

My next guess is that it's the motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard ) or processor, but I'm not sure how to troubleshoot that problem. It looks like all the cables are connected.

Any thoughts?