GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

I use iTunes to manage my music collection. Its tagging capabilities leave a lot to be desired. I'm playing around with fixtunes to clean up some of the tags, but I was wondering if folks have any other suggestions about a good tagger that works with Mac and iTunes.

So I'm trying to put in a clean copy of XP Media Center on my Mom's Acer laptop (her current installation is kinda jacked) and I can't figure out quite how to do it. I'm very familiar with putting together a PC and installing OS from scratch but my biggest challenge here is finding a XP Media Center disc without actually buying one. I still have the product key, it's on the sticker under the laptop. So the million dollar question is: how/where do I get/buy a Windows XP installation disc without the product key (which I already have)?

My 2012 i7 Mac Mini is still my main computer as it does pretty much all that I need (16G RAM, 500G SSD + 1T HDD). It is currently on High Sierra due to 32 bit support. Several apps that I use are 32 bit and can't be easily/cheaply upgraded to 64 bit: Eagle ($$$), Office 2011 and 2016 (I still prefer older office versions), etc. My wife uses Turbo Tax and this year the pricks require Mojave as the minimum version. I know that Mojave supposedly supports 32 bit apps, but does it really? Someone suggested that I might want to install it on a separate drive to test before doing so on the main SSD. Any recs for an external drive (SSD?) of probably 2T to use for this …

I've got a student in the family who wants to carry a laptop to class. Given the distance between classes, she finds it easier to chill and study between classes at some of the more convenient study areas which have wireless capability. Unfortunately, her present laptop is a desktop replacement and far from "portable". So, can anyone recommend a very inexpensive ultra portable unit she could carry around campus? All it will be used for is papers and research on the internet. It won't carry a lot of large files nor does it need to be a performance dynamo. Small...cheap....wireless. That's about it. Any help appreciated.

I need to make a Windows Live account, but the site is claiming that all 3 of my email addresses are already assigned to accounts. When I try the password reset feature, it loops back to the login page. The Windows Live login pages leads to an XBox Live support page help page (are these services the same thing?) The XBox contact page has a 1-800 number, but all of its voice prompts are for XBox related services. I realize this is Microsoft I'm dealing with here, but does anyone know a contact # where I can reach MS and get a Windows Live account set up?

I have a cable modem that has the feature of a "land line" phone. I'm not using the phone and am tired of paying for it. I can cancel the feature but then have to supply my own cable modem. I plan on buying a modem that supports Docsis 3. Can anybody recommend for or against any particular brands or models? Thanks in advance for your advice.

I've been using Max quite happily for all my codec switching needs for a while, but have recently found it's crashing when asked to chew 24-bit FLAC files and spit out MPEG4. Have been working around by using AIFF instead, which works fine, but just wondering if anyone knows if this is a limitation of the converter or the output format? Thanks.

So this guy on eBay has a disc that I want, and since he's in Germany, and there are other things in Germany that I want, I want to be able to browse what he has, but he sucks and doesn't put them in categories or anything. Does anyone have any advice on how to go through his catalog without looking up every single thing he has somewhere else? It's this guy, tucu9. I got SACD's, and there's even one I want (After Forever, though no Epica), but beyond that I'm stumped. I like his electro/ebm/industrial selection (which includes the disc I want), but am insufficently familiar with compilations to know which are good ones and which are not so good (I am avidly not in…

So apparently there's a little snafu at Google? I was searching for some things this morning and came across this error message: Warning this site may harm your computer. Essentially google is popping this up for every search. You can't click through the links at all for some reason. Anyone know anything about this. Getting news on it it tough, because you CAN'T CLICK THROUGH GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS!?!?!?!?!

Hopefully some of you more experienced desktop people have a solution for this problem. We have a nearly two year old Intel I7 Ivy Bridge desktop computer. It has 16G of ram, 180 GB SSD HD and a 1 T external HD with the cpu running slightly overclocked. Core speed is 4398 MHz, Multiplier X 44, Bus speed is 99.98MHz. For the past six months while gaming and often times doing nothing taxing to the cpu, we have experienced the blue screen crash with the "windows detected hardware error". I think we need to back off the CPU speed a bit but after reading the Google searches and bus recommendations, I am not confident I can do this correctly. Any suggestion…

Here's one for the IT guys: I share a printer between 4 computers on a network and I want to monitor how many copies are printed from each of them. It seemed to me like a rather simple and common thing to do, but I've spent the last hour googling for a free solution to the problem and apparently it doesn't exist. There are many enterprise solutions, but I won't pay 100$ to do such a simple task on my home network. Have I overlooked something?

I've heard that one should avoid no-name flash drives because then they'll only last a couple of refreshes -- is that true? I was going to get one of the $10-ish 16G ones. Are there any brands I should avoid? Corsair, Kingston, OCZ, Patriot, Crucial, Transcend, IPSG, Lexar, Sandisk, etc.? E.G., I was told to avoid anything like these.

I have received a HP tablet PC from work. Which I don't have any use for work wise. My current laptop is a P-M 1.8 GHz with a gig of RAM running XP which is plenty fast for the research and patient software I need to run. And seeing how this was some how factored into the hospital/academic budget I'm free to do whatever I want with it. I think these are the specs: Genuine Windows Vista? Business (except it's coming loading with XP Pro) Windows Vista? capable*Windows Vista? Premium ready Intel? Core?2 Duo Ultra Low Voltage Processor (up to 1.2 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache) 1 x 1024MB DDR2 80 GB No optical device 12.1 Illumi-Lite WXGA (1280 x 800 resolution), UWVA, with…

Any way to tell? My uncle runs a company and received an anonymous email from one of his employees saying that these people (3 branch office heads) opened their own company and are channeling my uncle's clients there. And this picture is supposed to be proof.

I need an online to do list manager, primarily for coordinating a move, but doesn't need to be specific to that. I've looked into a bunch of the major ones, which seem ok, but I'd be curious to hear if folks have recommendations.

I was just given a Dell Dimension 4600 computer and I fucked up. I wanted to reinstall XP but didn't have the OS disk from dell. I had the bright idea to use my OS disk from my compaq computer. It seemed to work until I realized that the compaq disk doesn't have the drivers for the video card, sound card and most importantly the ethernet or modem! I can't even go online to download the drivers because I can't use the ethernet port. Plus I have to activate it in 30 days. If any of you have a dell dimension computer would you please for the love of god mail me a copy of your OEM XP Home disk? It's no illegal since I have a legitimate key on the side of my computer. I ca…

I can't seem to stop the porn pop ups. it seems as if the computer found out i love tits and ass, and decided to pleasure me with tits and ass on it's own... the problem is it won't stop... Is it me or the computer that likes tits and ass more? Why is my computer browsing porn on it's own... btw, is this going to help me get laid? I'm scared.

So I'm taking a 3 week vacation to the Philippines next week and I'd like to be able to stream video from various sources - Netflix, NBC Sports, HBO GO, etc. and I know that there are limitations on streaming these outside the USA. It seems like a VPN is a feasible solution. Any recommendations on which service to use? I don't mind paying for a month and I'm trying to stream via iPad/iPhone and perhaps using my laptop as a backup. Thanks!

currently looking at acer aspire one (aod250). can be had from sams club for $294. i dont HAVE to spend the above mentioned amount. also cant find any real information about the differences between the z-series chips and the n-series chips except for just a different in the bus speeds. anyone actually know more about them? requirements (things i would like to have) windows xp/linux (NO VISTA. under no conditions) < 3 lbs battery should hold charge for at least 2.5 hours. (heavier laptop is ok if battery lasts longer) fanless would be nice but active cooling is ok as long as its not too loud. color must be black. dont want a fingerprint magnet but if its che…

Hey all. I'm having weird difficulties establishing a secure connection to certain Web sites. Some work fine (gmail, online banking, amazon, itunes etc.) but some (paypal, me.com, random ecommerce sites) will not load on my iMac in any browser -- have tried Safari, Firefox and Chrome. The pages will start to render and then hang forever with no further network activity. This only occurs when connected to our home wireless setup -- cellular data connections via iPhone or iPad are OK. I've checked the router settings and nothing is being blocked there. No difference with OS X firewall off, or with Little Snitch disabled. Even switched ISPs to see if it was something at that…

How secure are Google Docs and Google Apps? We're looking into document sharing here at my day job and someone mentioned google docs. Thing is, these are fairly sensitive documents with confidential information. Is this secure enough or no. Anyone else's company share docs this way?

My mac mini (mid 2011 with an OWC SSD has started to slowly flake out during start up. Just about every other start up I get the white screen with the flashing folder icon, indicating that the mini can't find the start up disk. So far I have reset the PRAM and completed a reinstall of OS X from the web by doing the command R at start up. The mac also needs to be restarted after a multi hour sleep period as it goes into pinwheel and does not reposed until restarted. I'm trying to hold off on a new mini until the new 2016 models are released later this spring (at least that is the rumor) Any thoughts, could it be a bad logic board battery or just a …

Hi Everyone, Alright, I have two HDD's in raid and would like to figure out how to get my fucking computer to allow me to access them sometime this century. Their set up in the raid utility and it says both HDD's are functional. I have a P4 2.4Ghz, asus P4P800-E Deluxe Mobo which I updated the bios (1010-001) this morning with no issues. I don't know where to go from here, any help is appreciated.

Yo- I'm a bit of a hardware amateur. I'm looking to upgrade my video card (from a 7950GT to an 8800GT, either a BFG or eVGA) and am wondering if I should upgrade my computer's power supply at the same time. I do not know how to check to see what kind of PSU my computer uses, outside of opening it up. Can anyone tell me how? Thanks.