GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

Anyone have experience with the Drobo 5D--good or bad?

Usually (once every five years or so) when I upgrade my home machine/home office server I go over all the distribution options, try out candidates on virtual machines and generally make a considered affair of it. This time, since my machine has collapsed in a cloud of MCEs, I've got to just decide and go for it. I've used Mandriva and basically liked it ever since Fedora forked off from Red Hat. I like KDE and have never warmed to Gnome at all. Which is really why I moved to Mandrake at the end of consumer Red Hat. Red Hat and Fedora were anti-KDE back then. I understand that's changed since. My last upgrade was Mandriva 2007. System management tools and the like…

So apparently you guys who think computer audio is the way to go are deluding yourselves: meh .

Well my main rig has a failing motherboard. (tyan)... This thing (when I was bench testing it) I am looking at a new motherboard and CPU (I cannot give up the case). Going with the new Intel i7 3770S chip and an acer z77 board (along with SSD, etc)... Anyone out there running Ivy bridge chip yet? Almost ran to Frys tonight and bought a pile of stuff (in stock), but I am testing my resolve to take my time and just do it right (and save on tax and driving). I can do it, if it is not whisky, I swear. Cheers, Mikey

I did something incredibly stupid today and lost most of the Users folder on my system while transferring them to my other hard drive (Move, not copy). My last backup was a year ago, so I am looking for a utility to undelete deleted files. Any suggestions? I don't really want to spend $100-$200 for one as there isn't anything that is really that critical; more of a nice to have. Ones I have looked at so far are: FileSalvage (6.1.7) AppleXsoft File Recovery for Mac (2.0) Boomerang-MacOSX-2.1.9 StellarPhoenix 3.5 Any recommendations?

So I finally got my internet "working" a little while back and now my router is being a PITA. When I connect from the cable modem to the router, and either connect wirelessly or wired to the router there is no internet, but I can still access the router page (192.168.1.1) and if I connect the cable modem straight to the computer using ethernet, the internet works fine. I tried resetting the router and doing everything I found online (that doesnt void the warranty) such as changing the router ip address, changing the router to static ip address, trying different security options, beating it up etc etc So does anyone have any suggestions?

My newish laptop is eligible for the Microsoft OS upgrade. Has anyone bit on the MS free upgrade? Any war stories? Curious...

So, either what's the best "value" keyboard that I should get, or how much should I consider spending, if they're all the same? Basically, I need to get an add-on for a laptop that I've been using more frequently, and everything I have is PS2. $10? $25? Should I get this? Or should I just get the cheapest thing I can find with full-size keys (currently, the price to beat appears to be US$10)? Or should I get one of those roll-away ones? I'm asking for experience from people who've gotten keyboards for their laptops as well as advice on price-setting.

Recently, I acquired an Apple TV to serve music wirelessly to the ps audio dl 3 dac. When it works, I have no issues. Even the delay/lag problem I was having just stopped occurring after I restarted the macbook air. Perhaps there was a buffer issue. I didn't need to buy and 3rd party software. It works on any kind of audio/video file. However, every time I try to select the Apple TV in sound settings on my MBA, it kills the wireless router. The only way to fix it is to power cycle the router. I am using WPA2 encryption and the problem persists without any encryption schemes as well. Any thoughts on what could be causing this and how to fix it? It kills the internet ab…

What's the latest and greatest? I'm looking at the Asus RT-AC66U. To make a long story short, I'm having some problems (not worth going into) with my current routers/APs and I'm looking to see if I can get a single unit that can cover the entire property...I'm throwing money at the problem now. Is this a good way to go?

I am looking to buy My wife a laptop for Christmas,I usually buy Dell but am thinking Mac this time. she just uses it to surf the net,email, facebook.She will be using it at home.

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

Been thinking about going back to a computer based system (been looking at DACs ) but my only hesitation is that my MacBook won't read some of my CDs. Drive reads 99% of my CD collection, 100% of my DVDs and it's not random either, meaning it won't read the same CDs. Here are a couple it won't read: Radiohead - In Rainbows (from box set) Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia Any thoughts? I guess I could get an external drive

I think I just fried mine, but is that possible? My laptop charges fine with my brother's charger but mine doesn't seem to work. Question: Should I buy another one from lenovo or any cheap one from ebay? or does anyone have a spare?

I went ahead and got a XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Black Edition last week, but I discovered that I needed 1x 8-pin PCI-E connector and 1x 6-pin PCI-E connector to power this card. I'm not sure what type of PSU would be good. I have a 620W not-so-good PSU right now, and it's a single rail old design one (I have no idea what I'm talking about, I showed it to someone and they told me this rail thing.) Any recommendation for what PSU to get? I'm running 4 HDDs, but that is no problem because most of the newer PSUs have more than enough connectors. Does this look like a good PSU to purchase? Antec - Signature 850 or the 650W version... Antec - Signature 650 Pleas…

Is the PS3 a useful device if you don't do much gaming? I remember reading about it being a "great" blu-ray player and SACD capable. Whaddya say?

We just installed our cable internets at our apartment today and I picked up a wireless router. Now my roomate's laptop isn't able to do WPA Soooo, we're using WEP 128 bit right now. Now we're in a pretty nice building and when I use my wireless browser program to look for SSIDs I see about 15-20. Most are locked, one or two aren't. Which obviously means there are tons of wifi users in this building. How paranoid should I be about people cracking our WEP? For what it's worth I only get on the internet about an hour at night, and he probably does the same. Neither of us leave our laptops running all the time; I might overnight or during the day if I'm downloading s…

Hubby and I share an office and the pounding of the keyboard drives me crazy* (ok, technically it just makes me really upset, not crazy). Right now he has a USB Apple keyboard. The problem is that he uses two fingers to type and hence pounds on the keys. Please help my marriage by telling me there is a quietish keyboard solution out there. *This is probably related to my other noise issues like people eating, etc. So, if there is no such keyboard, I would appreciate the name of a good shrink or drugs.

I need to add a second HD to my G5 Powermac (dual 1.8Ghz) and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations? Should be SATA IIRC. Thought I might get it from OWC or newegg? Something in the 500G or so range I think, but open to suggestions. The PM has an 80G and I haven't filled that up yet (kids are working on it though). I went back 4 pages and didn't see a similar topic, so thought I would just ask.

I think I am going to my dad a new basic desktop computer. His computer is about a million years old but he is way too cheap and stubborn to replace it. I think I may get him a Dell Inspiron 3000. It has a reasonable processor (Intel Quad Core 4th gen i5 3.2GHz), is not too expensive, has 8GB RAM, and I can always upgrade to an SSD if needed. He doesn't do much on it (just listens to music, some basic spreadsheets, and browses the web). I can get it with Window 7 or 8. I am leaning towards 7 because 8 is pretty different than he is used to using (XP). Is there any reason to go with Windows 8? For example, is Windows going to stop supporting 7 or is Windows 8…

alright, this is mostly a question for mac users, but if you windows users got some advice, i'd love to hear it. anyway, i have a bunch of tv shows downloaded on my external hdd (scrubs, house, lost, bsg, etc.) and my roommate wants to watch them on his computer in the other room sometime. i have a macbook and he has a macbook pro, and we're both running leopard with file sharing on. i'm using an 802.11g network and since about a month ago, the video streaming worked perfectly fine. my roommate could watch any and all shows that he wanted by simply connecting to my computer via the shared network. recently, however, the video streams have basically gone to shit. he …

We have a original Drobo DAS that I picked up from Dan a long time ago and is still going but it's gotten a bit flaky with windows 10 sleep for some reason and Drobo stopped doing software updates 5 years ago I think. Anyway I'm thinking of replacing it and I'm wondering what the current state of the art is? I'm thinking of just getting the new Drobo USB 3.0 but I was wondering if anyone else knows of something better. Right now I'm still thinking DAS because I want to keep the Backblaze backup going etc. Maybe it makes more sense to move one drive local to the machine use that for the data and backup and then go to a dedicated NAS for the backup and slimserver?

So last night I tried to replace both the LCD and the battery to my iPod 5.5g. I probably should have done one at a time to minimize troubleshooting, but hell, I'm an optimist. So after reconnecting everything, I try to turn it on. No joy. But I can hear the HD whirring, so I think it's getting juice. Black screen, though. So obviously it could be a bad LCD that I received. But I also get strange errors when trying to connect to iTunes. It tells me the iPod needs to be restored, but then claims the iPod is busy when it attempts to do so. And that's bullshit. I've tried resetting the damn thing every way I know how to no avail. My next troubleshooting s…

So I decided to upgrade my home file server from a Windows 2003 Server platform to something else. All the server does is serve files to Mac clients and run the Squeezebox Server. DNS and DHCP is performed by my router. No Email or Web serving. The reason I'm upgrading is because the Squeezebox server is running kinda flaky lately and file server speeds are kinda slow for a small Gigabit network. The hardware is semi heavy duty. It's a HP xw8200 workstation with dual 3.2 GHz Xeon CPU's, 6 GB Ram and 1.5 TB of internal disk. I also have a LacIe 4TB estata/FW/USB that's configured as a 3 TB RAID 5 external drive via esata. I recently installed a Linux SUSE 11.3 64-bi…

I'd like to extend the life of a 3.5 y/o laptop by replacing the stock HD with an SSD. The plan is to use it for OS (Vista64) & apps only, with data kept external. Don't want to overspend since it is an ever-aging laptop, so I figure the 64GB models strike a good balance between capacity & price (~US$100). Trying to catch up on this tech by reading various reviews & comparing to what is for sale these days. It seems older models were plagued with reliability issues, which I don't need. Brands with better track records include Plextor, Crucial, & Samsung. Surprisingly, Kingston has more than their fair share of negative reviews. So, although they cost a …