GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

Anyone have experience with the Sewell 16ft extender or recommended another cheap alternative? Debating about switching to a USB DAC solution for a largish space (instead of Squeezebox).

So my computer has started doing this thing where every time I turn it on, after about 5 minutes, give or take a minute, regardless of what I'm doing on the computer, I get a blue screen of death crash and the computer resets. The weird thing is, once it resets and starts up again, its 100% fine, no more crashes. This only occurs when I start my computer from an off state. When I start back up it always gives me the "windows has recovered from a serious error" box. The reason is something to do with bad memory. Indeed I did add some new RAM several weeks back, but I did not start experiencing this until recently. Nevertheless, I've done lots of trouble shooting in…

So Google has a new Wikipedia competitor, called KNOL. Chief difference? Settings preventing an article from being modified by anyone other than the original author. LOL

So my desktop is having some issues. I'm trying to solve the problem before I take to repair. What happens is that when I open MS Outlook the computer crashes and reboots. This is really strange as with other programs such as my accounting/stock management program it works ok. The hardware is a bit old but didn't have any problems up to now. MS Office is also having a few problems, I try to open a word doc and it won't start. I tryed doing a system backup to a DVD but I can't either. I am starting to consider saving all files manualy and then formating everything, but if I can save the trouble it would be great! Any ideias of what might be wrong? Thanks…

I sent my laptop to get the charging pin replaced about a month ago. They did a fine job, but sent me a replacement charging cable/brick since the connector on my old one was a bit worn down. The replacement didn't exactly exude confidence in build quality It was working fine for a month, but just now I saw a spark in the middle of the cable which then caught into a small flame and burned a hole through the rubber covering. Fortunately it went out by itself and my computer wasn't damaged. If I had my camera I'd post pictures of the cable; it's not a pretty sight.

i need to send my macBook pro to Apple for repair. i have never backed up my system, but would really like to save about fifty very important garageband files plus at least 500 word files -- don't really care about the other stuff. recommendations and advice would be greatly appreciated on the "best bang for the buck" external HD that will work seamlessly with my mac/time machine and is it easy to back-up those files and restore them especially those garageband files? if possible, i'd like to keep my outlay under $150.

Two separate questions: What are the best choices for ergonomic keyboards? What are the best choices for trackballs?

I'm thinking of buying a new laptop with 4 gb of RAM installed. It comes with windows vista but I'm planning on installing XP pro 32bit edition. I've read that XP has trouble with more than 3 GB of ram. Will I encounter a problem with this if I decide to do it? Here's a link to the computer if it will answer any questions. Gateway - Laptop with Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology - Pacific Blue - T-6836 Thanks!

Our AVID at work every so often keeps crashing. This is the message that comes up when it restarts... Windows XP HP Ethernet Boot Agent v8.3.9 Copyright

Just a heads up for anyone who wants a great usb drive. NCIX is a vancouver store, but I'm sure there are other online stores that sells this for cheap. I just purchased this. OCZ has a $25 rebate offer right now. NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Rally 2 High Performance 32GB USB2.0 Dual Channel Flash Memory Drive - OCZUSBR2DC-32GB In Canada. OCZ Rally 2 High Performance 32GB USB2.0 Dual Channel Flash Memory Drive offtopic: I love NCIX, they always have sunday savings for a great deal haha.. I don't work for them, just sharing the deal with you guys.

I think it dissapeared around the time I installed service pack 3. Does anyone know the name/location of the exe that launches the search command? Thanks, Biggie.

Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 3 today. You can grab it from our download section here

Yay! Looking forward to my 15/2 package being bumped up to 20/5 sometime next week.

Honestly I've looked at both of these cards and I have a general sense of what these cards are. 9800GX2 is like 2x of those G92 8800GTS 512MB video cards but inside one enclosure. GTX280? The newest card for like $500-600. Recently my G80 8800GTS 640MB has been acting weird, over heating (over heated for the first time during one hot day when I had a BBQ and left the computer on in a closed room which was a bad idea) and weird things has happened to my computer like screen messing up and not receiving signals from my GPU or something. The problem is once I buy a newer card, I would probably have to upgrade my 600W power supply which would be irritating but thi…

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?

PC w/ XP SP2 (Media Center Edition) 2 GB RAM Fan on previous video card crapped out. I had been using onboard coax out with ASIO4ALL through foobar. New Visiontek ATI Raedon HD 3870 512 video card... With onboard HD sound meant to go through HDMI cable to HDMI ready monitor, receiver or HDTV. Now that my new video card is installed, I'm getting no audio through the onboard digital out. My DAC won't lock on a signal, and as a result, I'm left with no audio here at work. Is it as simple as unistalling the new audio drivers for the video card so it goes back to the onboard sound? Or is there more I need to do?

I am thinking of finally getting myself a 24" LCD. Right now I have 19" Samsung that I got a few years ago. It is a pretty basic model without any adjustments or inputs, but picture quality has been fine for me. However, now I want to get a nice LCD with composite inputs, HD, and all that other cool shit. I think 24" will be more than enough. I looked around and there seems to be so many options, I am pretty lost. Dell 2408WFP seems to be pretty sweet from features side, and my buddy has an older version of it that he loves... Which LCD can you recommend? Budget is probably around $600, but can be expanded if needed. I will use it for movies, games and internet. thank…

Ok macophiles, I've got an OS X question for you. The laptop that I'm currently using is a Powerbook G4 w/ 1GHz processor and a piddly 256Mb of RAM. It's using OS X 10.3x9 which I believe is "Panther" or some such nonsense. Basically what I'm trying to do is upspec the laptop to the point where it can use the Duet. I've got a 1Gb RAM stick, but it was unstable when I first installed it. So my thought is to try upgrading the OS to Tiger (10.4.11, I think) and I'm wondering what I have to do to do this? Can I just download the upgrade from Apple? Can I purchase a used copy? Other thoughts or suggestions appreciated. I'm trying to limit my investment here since it's…

Well I have the iMac up and running. Right now its primary duty will be to run squeezecenter for the abode as well as some web browsing. I have to say I am really impressed by the build quality and the quality of the OS. This is the first Apple computer product I have bought since my first PC in 1981 so I have not really paid a lot of attention to MAC software. It has the standard Mac apps as well as iWork 08. I will probably also put aperture on their to see how I like it for working with images. Other than that I am in the dark so tell me what other killer apps I should get to put my PC's to shame.

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've been having this problem for years, and have gone through like 5 different routers and various wireless cards. I am constantly having dropouts with my wireless and have to constantly reconnect, and even when connected it can still be pretty slow. Right now I have a Trendnet something N router and an N card. It had been working pretty well until around a week ago, I have no idea why it would suddenly start being so terrible again. My computer a floor above the router and pretty far, but I have problems with the laptop one room away from the router as well. What the hell can I do, other than getting ethernet wired through the house (which would be really expensive i…

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.

There is going to be a pretty big sale on a 1 TB internal sata hard drive from Seagate at Best Buy. $189. 32mb cache Just a heads-up http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1292021

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phones/pda-phones-smartphones.jsp

My laptop of three years might not be of use any more The charger pin is either loose or faulty since I have to wiggle the charger wire a lot in order for it to get a secure connection. It's got to the point where I have to fiddle with it for as much as a half an hour before it sticks, only for it to loosen up with the slightest movement. And since it was an OEM (Compal) I'm not exactly sure how to get it repaired...if any one has any ideas I'd appreciate it. So I'm considering a new laptop. I paid $1300 for this one back in the day and I'm fed up paying so much for what's pretty much a two to three year disposable device (previous Dell lasted same amount of time).…