GoRedwings19's Computer Help Hotline

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…

Have on my iPhone, but not in my laptops browser yet.

Is there any way I could block specific TCP/UDP ports without reconfiguring the main router? My younger brother's XBOX Live games disturbing my sleep are getting a little old. While this would be easy enough to do at the router level, my brother is smart enough (I assume) to troubleshoot via cycling the router's power, resetting any changes I might make. I suppose this could be viewed as a passive aggressive way of resolving the problem, but I think all of the interested parties would prefer it to the more destructive solutions I have in mind.

Are there any secure ebook formats that are readable in linux ? I was wanting to try and read "Dark Angel: Before the Dawn" which appears to be available only in secure formats Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader/Adobe ebook/eReader are any of these accesible from within linux ? I'm using Opensuse 11.2

I have a HP PC with a 365W power supply, and I want to upgrade the video. The system currently has a single HD and a single DVD drive. The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Quad. How do I figure out whether the system can handle the power requirements of a video card? I'm looking to spend $120-$170 on a video card -- a middle of the pack gaming performer. I'm looking at Radeo HD 5750 cards and some nVidia cards. I also found an interesting fanless Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GT card. Quiet performance is always good. But as I read the product specs on newegg for various video cards, I see many cards requiring 400+ watt PS. Assuming I can even upgrade the PS in this HP, is that what …

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…

Hi all, So I'm going to jump on the Squeezebox train, and looking for advice on the best way to do it right, from the get-go. Right now, my computer audio situation is languishing in the 90s, as I am a big Sony/ATRAC fanboi. I have a bunch of stuff ripped to Sonicstage which I will most likely keep in the immediate future for portable use only. As for the Squeezebox thing, I want to rip my entire CD collection (350+ last count) into a lossless format and store it on an external HD or NAS/RAID setup. I'll be using a 1 year old Dell desktop, running Windows XP. I plan to hook everything up via ethernet. I suppose my main question concerns library management: Wh…

Ok gents I've worked on this thing for days now to no avail. My Toshiba LT (Vista) will not recognize my HR DAC. I've rebooted, gone into my INF files to check if any of the USB got renamed, tried all the USB ports, checked for driver updates, etc. Nothing. Any help is immensely appreciated, Thanks!

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'm starting to accumulate a fair bit of hi-res material in iTunes and much of it is made up of higher-bit rate versions of albums I already have in CD format. What I can't seem to figure out is how to tag these duplicate albums so they will sort and display separately without adding a modifier (like [24/96] or [DVD-A] or whatever) to the Album field -- since doing that screws up LastFM and other apps that pull that data. Sub-fields like Comments, Grouping etc. don't seem to be used by iTunes to distinguish different versions. Any iTunes power users out there?

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 decided to give my dad my partner's old laptop (Pentium M 1.6Ghz 1GB RAM). After erasing everything and reinstalling Windows XP Pro from the original disk, the computer kept crashing. I am guessing that it had something to do with some drivers. Instead of trying to fix it, I wiped the HD clean and installed Linux Mint on it. I figured that he could do everything on Linux that he needed. So I get to my parents house today and find out that most of what my dad does on the computer is stream Netflix movies. As far as I can tell, you cannot stream Netflix with Linux (even with Moonlight). If there is a way, I would love to know. My other option is to insta…

My current home pc has been good to me over the last 6-7 years but i feel it's time to update to a newer a more robust machine. i have been waiting for Windows 7 to come closer to retail till i start to look into the pieces more seriously and i feel the time is now. this time around i want to build my own instead of buying an off the shelf. my current pc is a hp Media Center M370n with an upgraded Video card (nvidia 256), 3.24gigs of ram, and a 250gb hard drive. my use's for the current machine: keeping up with my music library (main use) watching movies via dvd or itunes downloads or from hulu as i use a Vizio 32 lcd as a monitor. net browsing of course. using …

I'm running pretty low on space on my laptop due to all the music I've been ripping to FLAC lately, so I'm left with two options: (1) get a new laptop, or (2) get a nice big external HD. (The internal HD is already at maximum possible with my 4-year old laptop - couldn't find any ATA-66 drives that were more than 100GB that were also 7200rpm.) For cost reasons I'd obviously prefer to get an external HD but that leaves me with a question. Is it feasible to run a USB external HD and a USB DAC at the same time? Should be technically possible I'd think but I was wondering if anyone has actually tried it and if there might any big latency issues that would make it less than…

last night i restarted my computer and windows said something happened and started to run chkdsk on a drive. i let it run and left the office. this morning when i can back and logged into windows, i was welcomed with a lovely sight showing 3 of my drives had been wiped by chkdsk...good going xp. ive googled this issue and it seems to be quite common with external drives. have tried 3 recovery softwares with no results. yall have any suggestions or did i just lose 3tb of media

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…

Warning: complete laptop newb, heads-up. Looking at getting my wife a new laptop, christmas/MBA graduation gift. Budget is $600 max. Biggest application will probably be the new adobe photoshop 8 that I bought her as well, she loves taking pics and the new laptop should be powerful enough to load full resolution pics pretty fast and for her to edit and adjust with ease. We are windows PC people, sorry mac users, and for her, ease of use as well as her picture stuff are her priorities. Thanks.

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?

Ok, I have a 10 year old nephew with a laptop. This was purchased by his IBC mother (my sister) at a pawn shop for cheap, and, of course, without the original XP media. Need I say more? But, I'm stuck getting XP back on it. The machine is not up for Vista, nor Win7 (pity, because I have a spare Vista upgrade), and Linux (Ubutu, etc) just is not an option for the spawn of IBC. So, how do I get a reasonable version of XP?

I've been trying to determine if this error is something happening on my side or it's the domain I am trying to access that's having the issue. I did a search on this type of error, but honestly I could not understand the jargon on some of the sites.... One suggestion is that this is a error message when there is some maintenance or the site simply is down... I tried two different machines and no luck, same message (two browsers as well firefox and IE.) Any suggestions, appreciated! [basically, what I'd like to know is if there is anything I can try on my side] This is specifically what I get: ERROR Access Denied Access Denied by security policy …

I've picked up a Duet (again) and would like to start playing around with ripping vinyl. Could one of you chaps who've already been down this road please point me in the direction of some decent software for the Mac to facilitate the process? Workflow tips also welcome! Thanks very much.

I just realized my 1 year iPhone warranty ran on the 13th. So I called the 1-800-Apple Store to see if they would let me purchase it late and got denied. Anyone know or heard if I'll have better luck going into my local store? Or am I just screwed. After my out of warranty Macbook debacle I didn't think I would let this happen again

Does anyone here know if a Windows 7 OEM disc can be used to upgrade a current Vista installation? I'd rather pick up the OEM than the upgrade for the following reasons: 1. OEM is cheaper 2. In case I want to do a clean install, I'm not sure if the upgrade disc would require me to do a Vista install FIRST and then a 7 upgrade SECOND. --> Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with this assumption. This might convince me to just buy the upgrade then. Thanks!

Just saw a thread about this on Audiocircles so I thought I would post the link here: Something wicked this way comes…the Dell Inspiron Zino HD AMD at Home

Radeon HD 5870 review Newegg's Stock (or lack thereof) I don't know how closely anyone else here follows the desktop GPU market, but for anyone else as intrigued as I am, this card is a BEAST. I am shocked to see it beat the GTX295 in a few game benches, and it runs pretty damn close behind in 3DMark Vantage (about as authoritative a benchmark as you can find). Not since Nvidia's 8 series have I been charged for a new release. I'm also glad to see that ATI is the one to enter the DX11 fray first; Nvidia has clearly been lagging in the aftermath of the 8 series success and it's time they feel the pressure from competition to put out something that is not only cap…