GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

Whats a really good disk defragmenter for Windows XP? Thanks

I'm trying to decide on a notebook. I haven't purchased a computer in a long time and I am really confused by all the new processors. I intend to use this notebook for web browsing, e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, music (iTunes, foobar, running SqueezeCenter), ripping/burning cd's and dvd's, and hopefully be able to watch HD videos without dropoffs. I also like being able to open several tabs in Firefox/IE at once without slowing down. In other words, everyday tasks just no gaming or video editing. I don't have much money so my budget is around $350. I know that makes my selection very limited, but I saw these refurbished notebooks from Circuit City/Tiger Di…

So just finished up replacing the old Belkin wireless router with an Airport Extreme. Nice upgrade in terms of speed, range and stability. I do have one slight incompatibility. The Belkin had WPA security and the Airport can use WPA2, which I prefer. My Netgear wireless printserver (WGPS606) worked fine on WPA but will not do WPA2 security. Since everything else works fine with WPA2, I do not want to downgrade the security protocol. So I am looking for recommendations for wireless print servers that do WPA2. Note, I cannot hook the printer up to the Airport as they are located in different parts of the house.

I'm stumped here and hoping someone else may have faced this issue before and solved it already. I'd like to burn some MP3 CDs for my wife's car so she can just put the changer on shuffle and have a decent amount of music on tap. (No, sadly it doesn't have an aux in.) Since I now keep my music in iTunes in lossless format, though, I haven't yet figured out a simple way to convert and burn a large playlist without subsequently ending up with loads of duplicate files needing to be purged from my library. Any thoughts?

I expect to upgrade my iPhone 3g to a 5 in the next couple of months. I figure it would be best if I convert my 21.5 iMac 3.06 to the latest 10.8.2 operating system. However, I am worried the 10.8.2 may still have a few bugs and since 10.6.8 has been so stable that a change may not be for the better. Any converters out there which could shed some light? I am also reading Mac Forums and Mac rumors to educate myself.

I give up. 1. Created Windows 10 boot media and Bootcamp drivers USB via Bootcamp. 2. Created Windows partition via Bootcamp. 3. System reboots to installs Windows and I get this: 4. Chose delete and format drive with same result. 5. Reboot into OS X and check disk utility and see this: 6. Reboot into Windows install again only for it to tell me it's not an NTFS partition. What the heck is the deal? This is a late 2013 iMac with Fusion Drive. All I want to do is run Brent into a wall.

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 thought this was pretty cool. For all you Apple fans. I remembered seeing the 20th anniversary one before, but never in person. Apple's 11 Most Intriguing Computer Designs - PC World On a separate note, Apple has plans to release an Apple tablet in 2010. Apple tablet is coming, analyst says | Apple - CNET News

Okay, so I need some computer help. I've got a Drobo, formatted HFS+, that I was using to store a lot of my goodies (2.8TB worth). The Drobo was usually connected to my HTPC running Windows XP - I used MacDrive to access the Drobo. Occasionally I would swtich the Drobo to my Mac to transfer files directly. I recently noticed that some of my files weren't working on the PC - I would play videos in VLC and nothing would happen, etc. When I connected the Drobo to my Mac, they would play. Now, I've discovered that some files "work" when Drobo is connected to the PC but not the Mac, others work when connected to the Mac but not to the PC, and some files don't work in ei…

What's the best way to rip audio tracks from a DVD? Windows, Linux, Mac? The bonus tracks from my Depeche Mode DVD's are a pain since they're region ...whatever Europe is, but I'd like to have access to them, since some of my favorite tracks are there.

thinkpad t410. everything stock except added 8gb of ram about 6 months ago. if i lock the computer, the screen goes blank after a few minutes. when i move the mouse to bring the screen back up, it locks up the machine and the only thing i can do is to manually turn it off and turn it on again. i used to have a screen saver (the flying windows from windows 98) and disabled it 2 days ago thinking it might be causing issues. problem persisted. just came back from the gym and i had locked the screen when i left. pressed the caps lock key as it has a led indicator inside it to see whether it had already frozen or if bringing it back to life screws it up. the light lit up a…

I need to centralize mah music. Need DSd and higHRES comatability. What is the current shortlist? Plex? Airplay? Preferences for linux compatible, and/or FireStick/Android app compatible.

I realize there've been a couple group buys/runs on deals/etc., but has anyone seriously shopped these around? I was looking at what Samsung had to offer since I was looking at a second battery for my phone, but they charge full retail, so ixNay that... Looks like I can get 20,000 mAh for ~$34 -- that's the only number that matters, innit? Well, other than getting a bunch of low ratings for exploding or setting things on fire or leaving scorch marks...

So I had ripped Abbey Road into FLAC files a while back and converted them (via Max) recently to ALAC so I can use them with my iPod. For some odd reason, I can't play one of the tracks (Something) nor can I add it to the iTunes library. Rest of the album works just fine and the track in question plays just fine in FLAC format on Cog. Anyone have any idea why this is happening? It's not that big of a deal but I really don't feel like tracking down my CD in the abbys that is my closet.

Sorry if this is old news, but I stumbled on a browser called Webkit for Mac. This thing is truly FAST. Surfing the web on my OSX'd 1000H netbook smokes everything else (except Webkit now on my Macmini). Seems quite stable too. If you're running OSX, you owe it to yourself to try this. The WebKit Open Source Project

My Lite-On DVD/CD recording drive is on its lasts legs. It still reads and writes okay, but the drawer only opens one time in 20. I suppose I should not complain much, as it was about $30, 3 years ago. Recommend to me a new DVD recorder. It must be internal, IDE, and preferably in stock at newegg. I have been perusing different models here [i am not sure this link will work for other users], and I notice with some distress that most such units cost $20 or so, which leads me to doubt their reliability. I see a couple Pioneer units that are around $40. It used to be that Pioneer made excellent DVD drives, but that was years ago, and I understand they are crap now. T…

I've been getting into Linux a bit lately and so far I really like Ubuntu the best. It's easy to use and their forums are a wealth of information. Ubuntu 7.04 just came out today and I figured I'd mirror it here: Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop (32-bit) Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop (64-bit) Ubuntu 7.04 Server (64-bit)

For quite some time now I've noticed that I'm constantly having to re-log in on certain websites. Head-Case is fine, but for example if I don't go to Head-Fi for 2 days when I do go back I'm logged out. There are at least 4 or 5 other sites that have been giving me this grief lately. I'm on Firefox 3.0.5 on a Mac. I'm the only one on this machine so I'm not worried about someone getting on and pretending to be me. This problem is really starting to annoy me. Any suggestions? I do periodically clear out private data minus Cookies, Offline Website Data, and Saved Passwords.

I created a seperate libarary in itunes in order to do some shuffling and converting of my existing library without touching it. Job done I came back to my original library. Except that it seems to think that all of my music is where i had previously copied the files to for the second library. The only thing unaffected is podcasts. Now I could simply recompile the library. I havent lost any files or anything. But Id have to sit and wait for all the artwork and volume levelling to process again. And the gapless stuff. And then run iVolume again. And this is all very time consuming and irritating. I'd also lose my play counts and probably my ratings (which I use f…

I have a bunch of flac files I want to convert to alac. I dl Max and it will transcode to aiff. It is asking me to choose linear pcm 8, 16, 24, 32 bit big endian integer. What should I choose?

I'm constantly having problems emailing back my Dad. I'm the only one in our family that seems to have this problem. Here's an example... Reporting-MTA: dns; comcast.net Arrival-Date: 25 Aug 2007 3:00:41 +0000 Final-Recipient: rfc822; (dad's address) Action: failed Status: 4.4.7 Unable to contact host for 2 days, Diagnostic-Code: smtp; Persistent Transient Failure: Delivery time expired Last-Attempt-Date: 25 Aug 2007 3:00:41 +0000 He can email me fine, but it's like 70% chance my response won't make it. I've tried sending a new message as well as responding to his email. He's on DSL... not sure what company. I'm on Comcast using Thunderbird.

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…

So, Firefox has been getting flakier and flakier on me, so I finally decided to give Opera a shot. It seems decent enough, and isn't having the page-loading issues Firefox had been having. But I'm having one major problem with it... I can't seem to get the scroll pad (next to the touch-pad) on my POS Gateway laptop to work. Using the space bar works, but is definitely less than ideal. And I can't find anything in the documentation to help. Has anyone else had this problem with the scroll pad & Opera? Thanks! Ian

Anyone have any experience with cloning a windows 7 installation to a new disk? This one is slightly complicated in that the disk is in two partitions, and overall is 500Gb and I want to clone to only a 120Gb SSD. I only need the C: partition (D: is manufactuers recovery partition), however I'm not sure how to make sure the thing boots normally without cloning the entire disk, which isn't possible in this case...