GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

So I get home from CanJam, and my macbook is doing something weird. I'm not sure I can describe this, it's like when a picture is too big and you have to scroll on a webpage to read across, except its the desktop, and all I'm doing it touching the pad. It moves, and the tool bars on the top and bottom no longer fit the screen. Also, no matter what I have up (like this forum) the whole page moves in the direction my finger goes when I touch the pad. It's making me crazy, and I can figure out how to make it stop. Kitty took a little walk across the keyboard this afternoon. I don't know if he messed with anything or not. Anyway, any help appreciated.

Dell lost a lawsuit and is required to pay consumers that purchased a Dell product from April 1, 2005 to April 13 2009 and meet experienced any of the following below: A problem with a Dell financing offer A problem with a Dell rebate A problem with Dell financing A problem with a Dell repair, warranty or servicing Here is the link with the story and there is a PDF you can download to fill out a form. Does Dell Owe You Money? - PC World There is of course no guarantees that you could get paid out, but it's worth a shot. Good luck if you do file it

I've been wanting to do this for a while. Sometimes my computer just starts acting wonky, and I know a format and full windows reinstall is forthcoming. about the only thing I really need on it is my music and some pictures (if you call random internet lolcat pictures I downloaded stuff I "need"). But anywho, today I got home from work, and I'd start up my computer, and it would get all the way to the windows desktop, then reboot. It repeated this in an endless loop. Luckily, I always keep an external hard drive with all my drivers, FLACs, and pictures on it. I also keep my Windows CDs in a safe place. Just a friendly reminder to always be prepared! computer is run…

I don't know whether I'm just out of touch and ignorant about Google's practices or whether our main IT guy just wants to give us a hard time by refusing to install Google Analyics and comparing Google to the Stasi. He wants to an open source thing called Piwik instead, which seems quite powerful and is actually more tweakable, but doesn't have Google Analytics's neat Adwords integration. I mean what could Google possibly want to do with our website data anyways (other than aggregating it for analysis purposes and for selling me AdWords) and they have thick privacy policy to boot. What do you think?

I've been using the default theme since 2.0 came out and I'd like to switch to something more interesting. So let's hear what theme you're using

Apple announces final MacWorld, Steve Jobs won't deliver keynote - Engadget

so last night I got through transferring all my music to my new drobo. this morning I wake up and it is in standby mode, unrecognized by Windows 7. I couldn't get it to mount by unplugging the USB cable, trying different USB ports, different USB cable. so I shut down my computer and power cycle the drobo. it comes back on fine, all green lights lit up, etc, but windows still won't recognize it. I get bad USB device errors when I plug it in. I'm currently scouring the Internet for solutions, and have tried lots of typical solutions, though I haven't power cycled the drobo again for fear of corruption (which might be what is already going on anyway). the screwed up th…

So I need to vent/laugh... I make my living in IT support for a large corporation and you would think that should rub off a bit on my parents. Nope! My stepdad is 78 and hasn't used a computer in 10 years and smart phones, forget about it. He decides to buy an Ipad and enlists the help of some guy at a bar (not me). What shows up is a fully loaded Ipad pro ($1000 +). Not bad so far right... He obviously wants to set it up right away (enter me). I'm walking him through the process and we get to the point where he needs the wifi info. He doesn't know the router name, asks my mom and she's unsure. I know what they usually choose for names and can see the ro…

So Julie was trying to purchase a book for one of the girls earlier today. She went to Amazon.com and was greeted with the login screen, not the usual amazon home page. She logged in and then the screen prompted her for her billing address to be updated. She entered that as well and then stopped at the following screen when the website asked for her credit card number and ssn. I came over and tried the same on my phone and macbook air. Same thing. I tried connecting to another wifi network and regular amazon website access. Same with the phone on LTE. Would reseting the wireless router kick out whoever might be causing this nonsense or should I just be changing the wirele…

My Mac mini (2011) died. No warranty. I was using it with attached USB drives and a Drobo I replaced it temporarily with a laptop I had lying around and re-attached my existing drives to it to serve files. This is a temporary solution. Before I had the mini I had a Netgear ReadyNAS with two drives in it. I need to serve out video, back up photos and other important files from across my local network, and run Crashplan and such. Maybe Plex? I was thinking of building a FreeNAS box myself, because it's the kind of thing I like to do. Then I stumbled across the FreeNAS Mini. Overkill? Probably. But that's when my middle name again reared its head: "Pay For Con…

Light Peak Technology

anyone have any experience using the apple wired keyboard on a pc? I have one of those awful logitech gaming keyboards and am looking to change. I'd be using the board with the numeric keypad for excel and calculator purposes. a little light googling turned up this helpful article: Use Apple Mac Keyboard on Windows PC Computer but I am wondering if any casers have any experience or opinions. thanks.

I have a 13.3" MB404LL/A (early 2008) MacBook. It's got a 2.4GHz C2D, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB drive. I'm ordering a 4GB upgrade for it today from MemoryX. I like that company because they guarantee what they sell will work with the machines they list. I notice that they have a 500GB drive listed on the page for my machine. I asked a friend of mine who is an alpha geek on the subject, and he said he suspected that I could "probably" get a 1TB drive to work with my laptop. Where would I begin to look to find that out and more imporantly what HDD models work well? So far googling has given me mountains of irrelevant and useless info. I have in the past considered …

Ok, Had some computer issues recently and was forced to rebuild my computer. I've have one of those Logitech Laser mouse thingies... something 1000. Downloaded the drivers and it installs setpoint. The damn thing is acting so twitchy... should I just uninstall setpoint? Will all the fancy extra buttons that I dont really use still work? dammmmmmnnnnnnnn yoooooouuuuuuu Logitech!!!!

I'm having a bizarre network issue. Do you have a favorite free network sniffer that you can recommend for a Vista system? Thanks in advance for your recommendations.

I upgraded my motherboard recently. Backed up everything that was on my C drive (Windows boot drive, main drive) then proceeded to reinstall Windows XP. My setup is 2 PATA hardrives sharing the same ribbon cable on one channel. A DVDRW drive on another channel. 2x SATA drives using a RAID card. After installing the RAID card drivers those hardrives worked fine. My main C drive works fine. But I can't get the second slave PATA drive to show up in Windows. I've tried Admin Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, which usually works fine. But this time it's not even showing up as a hidden drive. The second PATA drive is set to cable select (I beli…

I'm messing with integrating a wordpress blog into my site, by taking a basic theme and modifying the header and footer php files with the code from my html home page. This works except i can't seem to get my javascript menu to work on it...is there anything special i have to do w/ javascript in a php page? http://www.headamp.com/blog/ test blog http://www.headamp.com/ regular site

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 …

A friend of mine gave me an Agfa Snapscan 1212u flatbed scanner (USB). It appears to be an older, but very nice unit. Unfortunately, he didn't have the power supply for it. It needs 16 volds DC/900mA, in a barrel connector <mumble> size, tip positive. I can get one of the connectors @ Rat Shack, but where am I going to find a 16v PSU that puts 1A or so?

I am trying to simlify my life, and it is proving to be really complicated. Here's the story -- I would like to run a bunch of different software all on one computer. Most of it is not cross platform, or for one reason or another, I want to use various OSes for various tasks. Also, most of it is not goig to be in use all the time, but it would be nice if it was running when I needed it without a lot of configuration, and it would be nice to run much of it at the same time. Ideally, making this feel like a bunch of computers conected to a KVM would be perfect. So, for instance, I would like an automated cd ripper, a squeezebox server, and a music player. VortexBox will …

I'm wondering if there is any good software that can implement a "jukebox" style web interface to browse all albums. Basically create a website on a local computer that is easily updated with album art and artist information by simply inputting information into a field. The user can then just go to their local website and browse their entire collection say for example by album art. Or clicking on an artist which would then take you to a page of album art for just that artist. It wouldn't have to playback anything just serve as GUI showing the user what music they have access to. I'm using foobar2000 and iTunes, but both of them have become too cumbersome when de…

The desktop concept looked neat. I thought the pic of the AKG701 on the desktop looked nice too. The Windows 8 Concept Desktop - Desktops - Lifehacker What would you guys like to see in the Windows 8 desktop? I do like the feature in Windows 7 where I highlight a program in the taskbar and all the other windows disappear and the one that is highlighted is in the forefront.

Question for the Windows 7 HTPC users: My OEM of Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 with Blu-Ray and 3D just stopped working. Should I just go ahead and buy it (14, presumably)? I'm afraid that they're one of those "perpetually pay for upgrades" nickel-and-dime mickey-mouse bullshit software that I hate. Anything better out there? VLC? What do you use in your Windows 7 HTPC to play Blu-Rays? I do use SlySoft's AnyDVD HD for delayed viewing of rentals, but I still use Cyberlink PowerDVD to play back the video files -- if I should switch video players to something that works better with subtitles (the way I do it, I lose the subtitles during the Dothrakian sequences), please …

I'm looking for a very easy to use, and easy to read RSS Reader. Integration with Firefox would be good but not essential. Is there an industry leader here?

ordered some well reviewed g skill 8gb dual channel ram for my thinkpad. computer however is less responsive (slower start up times, slower times while opening programs, lag while typing etc) than it was with the 2gb stick that was in there earlier. the timings that the bios is running are 7-7-7-20 but the timings on the ram are 9-9-9-24. would bios forcing tighter timings on the ram be causing this issue? i cant think of anything else that would cause the system to slow down as opposed to get smoother with more ram. suggestions are welcome. figured i would ask here before i send this back and get ram that matches timings in bios. Forgot to mention that I ram Memte…