Author Topic: Tech-related problems (Read 582190 times)

chera · « **Reply #460 on:** November 04, 2006, 08:31:01 AM »

Quote from: Rakko;227874

You mean the dvd burner'll automatically reinstall the drivers by itself after I uninstall it?!! And it's not that my pc wont detect the burner just the burning process that's bothering me.

If might be a problem with your drivers. After you uninstall and then reboot, Windows will detect the presense of the plug 'n play DVD drive and should automatically reinstall the drivers for it. Best to have any installation CD that came with your drive handy. And also make sure you do a system backup/disk image before uninstalling.

tiny · « **Reply #461 on:** November 04, 2006, 03:19:33 PM »

A detected bad block on a CD or DVD could also result from dust or scratches on them. Read errors caused by a certain umount of dust and scratches can be detected and corrected, but there is a limit. Dust can be removed (carefully), scratches can't.

Another cause, could be the afformentioned copy protection for DVD's. The drive tries to read a certain protected block (=a standard amount of bytes) from the disk but fails with a read error because the error-correction code on the disk is faulty. This is done on purpose to make copying more difficult. If the disk played normaly there's nothing to worry about.

Reinstalling drivers is only neccaserry if there's a problem with them. You can see this in the Device Manager (accessible from the System Properties control panel).

Tip 1: always let the burn software verify the CD or DVD you've burned. I've learned this the hard way (back-up unreadable - data gone - major bummer.)

Tip 2: don't burn at the maximum speed of your drive or media. Burners make small mistakes while burning, usually these mistakes can be recovered through error-correction when reading the disk. At higher burn speeds more mistakes are made, so the chance of un unrecoverable error is bigger.

~Dan~ · « **Reply #462 on:** November 04, 2006, 05:09:56 PM »

Quote from: Rakko;227254

the device, \device\cdrom0, has a bad block. Any one know what the heck this is? I happened to see it in my logs.

I guess it depends if you were playing a disc or burning a disc. If you were playing a disc and didn't notice anything wrong then I'd forget about it. If you were burning a disc then you should set your cd burning software to verify after the burn. If it passes verification then you know everything should be ok.

Shinora · « **Reply #463 on:** November 06, 2006, 05:18:03 AM »

hi, i was wonderin if theres a plugin to listen to WMP streamed radio files on winamp instead?

Masabi · « **Reply #464 on:** November 12, 2006, 01:57:45 AM »

I have a serious problem. Whenever I try to search for things on my computer (Explorer) it closes out. And when I'm trying to upload a picture or something on firefox, it closes out of ALL my firefox windows because it shuts down. It only happens when there's thumbnails but it's a big problem because if I'm uploading a picture I obviously need to see the thumbnail. Argh.

ebc · « **Reply #465 on:** November 12, 2006, 03:40:58 AM »

Is it possible for you to find out if the problem is caused by a specific type of file?
For instance, the problem is quite well known when it's a corrupt avi. When viewing avi's in thumbnail view, if there's one that's corrupt then explorer will crash.
There's a simple way to fix this but from reading what you wrote I'm trying to work out if explorer is crashing on ALL thumbnails or a specific format.
If it's crashing on jpg's and other pictures then it could be that you have some 3rd party program that is trying to handle the thumbnails and it's broken. But that's just a guess.

Masabi · « **Reply #466 on:** November 12, 2006, 03:45:51 AM »

^ It's crashing jpgs and other pictures as well. It does crash when I view some corrupted AVI's thumbnails as well though.

Guchi_Jnr · « **Reply #467 on:** November 12, 2006, 04:15:06 AM »

I had this problem once before too.

Follow this guide, and find/disable the shell extension that's causing your problem.
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/techfiles/explorer-crashes.html

ebc · « **Reply #468 on:** November 12, 2006, 04:25:31 AM »

Do you have Photoshop installed?
Right click on a jpg and choose properties.
Then go to the Photoshop Image tab
and untick generate thumbnails.

If you don't have that Photoshop Image tab. Then it must be some other program messing with your thumbnails. Try to think of when the problem first started and if you happened to install any image programs around that time. If so, uninstall them and see if that helps.

With the problem where explorer crashes on avi files.
Only do this if you are happy with Explorer not being able to show the first frame of video in thumbnail view. (This is what causes it to crash if it sees a corrupt one.)
Go into regedit
That's: Start>Run>type regedit >hit ok>

In regedit expand HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Scroll down to SystemFileAssociations, expand that
Then find .avi, go into shellex then PropertyHandler.
In PropertyHandler you'll see something like this:

Select it and and delete it.

Masabi · « **Reply #469 on:** November 12, 2006, 04:27:29 AM »

^ Thanks for the AVI help! I don't have photoshop installed but I do have PSP installed, but it didn't have a problem before that. I can't think of what could be causing it so I'll try the link above.

[edit] There, took off a bunch of shell extensions, but that didn't work. I guess I'll keep trying the rest of the suggestions in the article.

Rakko · « **Reply #470 on:** November 16, 2006, 04:22:55 AM »

Ok so I was sleeping this morning when I suddenly heard my videocard fan spinning loudly all of a sudden. I decided to switch on my monitor and only to find my pc in a state of rebooting itself. Is it a hardware caused problem?!! This is a first for me on this machine.

frblckstr1 · « **Reply #471 on:** November 16, 2006, 07:29:03 AM »

^ It might be hardware (e.g. the video card) reacting to a program.
But it can also simply be your video card gone bad, keep an eye on it.

BTW, there have been reports of nVidia drivers accessable from the outside (also for Linux) doing some bad things, if you are directly connected to the Internet and have an nVidia update your drivers.

ebc · « **Reply #472 on:** November 16, 2006, 07:54:54 AM »

Quote from: Rakko

Woke up.....pc rebooting itself

Maybe it was rebooting after doing an automatic update?

thatguy · « **Reply #473 on:** November 16, 2006, 09:01:35 AM »

get a can of compressed air and clean out as much dust as you can, and all throughout your computer, not just the gpu. typically overheating on a gpu will cause your computer to lock up, not reboot. but it's possible it's somehow putting a strain on your psu. otherwise, you should check if you're leaving any particular apps running on your computer at night. before i knew the glories of utorrent, i would leave abc running, and lo-and-behold, its brilliant (read: terrible) memory allocation calls would crash my comp, and i'd find my comp restarted in the mornings.

Rakko · « **Reply #474 on:** November 16, 2006, 09:30:56 AM »

I think most probably its my graphics card fan. It's been erratic in terms of spinning up especially during a fresh boot from a shutdown after maintenance. It'd always be making this irritating sound like its trying to get into full spin but it goes away when I run the tip of my finger through the fan while its spinning. I did a search and there're reports of reboots caused by gpu overheating. Coz I checked my system logs and the reboot occurred right after I was woken up by the loud fan noise so it might be just it.

~Dan~ · « **Reply #475 on:** November 16, 2006, 03:53:26 PM »

Quote from: ebc;236143

Maybe it was rebooting after doing an automatic update?

That's possible. I had an automatic update yesterday. A few months ago after an update a friends computer kept popping up the little window asking to reboot, he kept cancelling it, and after about 3 times it rebooted anyway even though he didnt want it to!

00HB · « **Reply #476 on:** November 16, 2006, 05:25:02 PM »

:ONfrustrated:

Quote from: Rakko;236205

I think most probably its my graphics card fan. It's been erratic in terms of spinning up especially during a fresh boot from a shutdown after maintenance. It'd always be making this irritating sound like its trying to get into full spin but it goes away when I run the tip of my finger through the fan while its spinning.

Hum... it seems that it or is starting to fail or has too much dust in it.
Better clean with air, as was already said.:ONcool2:
"tipping your finger" will help only in the beggining, but the tendency is to get worst.:ONtemper:
Also (when you're cleanning) look out if there is any hair stuck in it. If you have long hair like me this could be a problem, as the fan can sucks in a single hair that felt and it can jam the spinning engine. Always clean your CPU.:ONomg:
But as for the reboot part, sometimes whe just lock up of your cpu is not suficient the computer will reboot as a counter measure from the heat, to avoid damage to the processor.:ONfever:

cool_kickin_dude · « **Reply #477 on:** November 27, 2006, 10:37:23 PM »

hey guys, here's a psp question although I may figure it out. I tried to go online and it says the LAN switch is not turned on. any ideas?

amuse · « **Reply #478 on:** November 27, 2006, 11:08:31 PM »

Quote from: cool_kickin_dude;244871

hey guys, here's a psp question although I may figure it out. I tried to go online and it says the LAN switch is not turned on. any ideas?

There's a switch on the left of your PSP to turn wifi on/off

JTRIX · « **Reply #479 on:** November 28, 2006, 01:13:40 AM »

If I want to turn my computer monitor into a TV screen to play a console (PS2, Xbox360, Wii, etc) what do I need?

I have a Samsung 19" Flatron monitor, with only analog output.