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What's going on with my computer? (The computer help thread)

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  • My desktop background keeps changing to plain black no matter how many times I change it. I'm running Vista.
  • My desktop background keeps changing to plain black no matter how many times I change it. I'm running Vista.
    Did you screw up the desktop rotation settings?
  • My desktop background keeps changing to plain black no matter how many times I change it. I'm running Vista.
    Was it built for Vista or did you upgrade an old computer? Whether that's a yes or a no do you have all the updated video drivers? I've seen XP computers do something similar when the drivers were not up to date.
  • It was built for Vista and no, I haven't messed with any desktop rotation settings. Intentionally, at least.
  • Trivial suggetions:
    1. check your administrator privileges.
    2. try creating a simple jpg in Mspaint and using it as a background. Does it work?
    3. Nuke the OS.
  • edited June 2009
    It's really trivial to reinstall an OS. Hell, I'm probably doing it right now, somewhere in this room.

    Update: Yes! A virtual machine on one of these desktops is running gentoo, which is currently compiling. Not as easy as installing ubuntu, but eh.
    Post edited by YoshoKatana on
  • 3. Nuke the OS.
    God, just because it's easy doesn't mean it has to be almost the first thing to do. Wasting time is an art. Seriously, I still suspect that the desktop rotation settings point to a non-existent or empty folder, thus causing it to out-rotate the 'current' wallpaper to a blank one with the default background colour.
  • Oh, and by the way the background change more or less coincides with the "YOUR COPY OF WINDOWS MAY NOT BE GENUINE" message. I think I know what the problem is D:
  • GeoGeo
    edited June 2009
    My laptop keeps on kernel panicking everytime I log in. I tried system restoring it but that didn't do jackshit, and I leave it alone on the log in screen and even then it kernel panics. I'm doing a memory diagnostics check, but I don't even know what will come of that. I am pissed off cause I have everything that is dear to me on their including my music and documents that I desperately need. I don't want to factory restore because I am not willing to lose everything. Please someone help me!

    BTW: It's a Windows Vista Inspiron 1525, just if anyone cares to know.
    Post edited by Geo on
  • Oh, and by the way the background change more or less coincides with the "YOUR COPY OF WINDOWS MAY NOT BE GENUINE" message. I think I know what the problem is D:
    Yeah, the explains it instantly.
    Windows Vista Inspiron 1525
    Never heard about that version. There's your problem.
    I am pissed off cause I have everything that is dear to me on their including my music and documents that I desperately need. I don't want to factory restore because I am not willing to lose everything. Please someone help me!
    Christ, the problem where reaching for the button makes sense, and you don't want to. Your shit should be backed up if you care for it. Throw the hard drive in another, working, computer, back up your shit you whiner and nuke. It sounds like your hard drive is not going to be reliable for long.
  • I am pissed off cause I have everything that is dear to me on their including my music and documents that I desperately need. I don't want to factory restore because I am not willing to lose everything. Please someone help me!
    Christ, the problem where reaching for the button makes sense, and you don't want to. Your shit should be backed up if you care for it. Throw the hard drive in another, working, computer, back up your shit you whiner and nuke. It sounds like your hard drive is not going to be reliable for long.
    I don't know how to get it out. And I don't have a home computer that it can be put in.
  • I don't know how to get it out. And I don't have a home computer that it can be put in.
    Never build a computer? Well then, use a LiveCD and copy stuff to an external HDD, then nuke it. If that's not possible either, sucks to be you. Also, why the fuck do you care about your music collection? You can rebuild that, god. It's probably all pirated music anyway, stop caring about that. It sucks for your 'important' documents but then you should have just backed that shit up. Hell, it's not like it's hard to make and use a separate partition for your documents, photo's, music and videos. They can even survive a dying hard drive in that scenario!

    Also, good jobbu fucking up that quote, I have no idea how you managed to do that short of you acting stupid.
  • Witnessing trolls in action always brings my mood up, and for that I thank you, Nineless.
  • jobbu
    I hope this was intentional. Because it ain't EPIN.
  • jobbu
    I hope this was intentional. Because it ain't EPIN.
    Yeah, it's intentional. I rebel against the txt-writers. Instead of removing 2 letters I ADD TWO! Take that txt-writers and your 'u's, you're not even Dutch so it doesn't even mean a real thing! Yes, 'u' is Dutch, it even means 'you', amazing eh? On that note, it would surprise you how many (un)intentional misspellings in English are perfectly normal Dutch words, another example, 'lul' means 'dick'. IT'S AMAZING! And people wonder why the Dutch have always been fuck awesome. :D
  • jobbu
    I hope this was intentional. Because it ain't EPIN.
    Yeah, it's intentional. I rebel against the txt-writers. Instead of removing 2 letters I ADD TWO! Take that txt-writers and your 'u's, you're not even Dutch so it doesn't even mean a real thing!Yes, 'u' is Dutch, it even means 'you', amazing eh? On that note, it would surprise you how many (un)intentional misspellings in English are perfectly normal Dutch words, another example, 'lul' means 'dick'. IT'S AMAZING! And people wonder why the Dutch have always been fuck awesome. :D
    So when people from 4chan do it for the luls....

    O.o
  • Hehe, so I assume "jobbu" is a Dutch word, then?
  • Hehe, so I assume "jobbu" is a Dutch word, then?
    No. I'm Dutch, not American. The English misspellings are made by Americans, how dare you insult me for one. :p
    So when people from 4chan do it for the luls....
    Welcome to my world.
  • edited June 2009
    Never build a computer?
    Inspiron 1525: image
    I think I just fell for a troll...
    Witnessing trolls in action always brings my mood up, and for that I thank you, Nineless.
    Aside from the building a computer comment, I don't think any of that was trolling, because it was all sound advice.
    Post edited by Dkong on
  • I think I just fell for a troll...
    You didn't. Partially if that makes you feel better. A laptop is still a computer, building one is similar to your standard desktop. Plug in cables and screw in a few screws, that's all. You can just take out the hard drive from the laptop and put it in a desktop, though you might need an adapter in between or you could just put the hard drive in a fitting enclosure and use it as external drive. If you don't know how to get a hard drive out of a laptop you probably aren't even trying to find out. Really, just because a computer costs more, doesn't mean that the tasks you have to do are any harder than unscrewing two wooden boards from each other or unplugging a power cord.
    Aside from the building a computer comment, I don't think any of that was trolling, because it was all sound advice.
    Correct. It's the magic of the internet, the default response to anything non-happy-go-lucky is 'troll' nowadays. If you ask me, the word 'troll' on the internet no longer has a meaning. Like duckrolling, it was fun at first, then the entire internet started doing it.
  • So, I'm building a NAS on a shoestring budget for my dorm next year (my roommates and I have a TON of media between the three of us), and I plan on doing a standard Samba share. This might sound like a dumb question, probably because I've never worked with Samba or any other network share protocol before, but can a Samba share be implemented to permitted users sharing a single switch? We're not allowed to have a router in the room, so we're using a switch to manage the several devices in the room that need wired access.
  • I wouldn't have the faintest idea why it shouldn't work. Also, sneak a router in the room, FOR SCIENCE IN SPAAAAAAAACE.
  • Cool. Also, Samba can be configured to share folders on external drives, right? That is, if I connect hard drives to my NAS via USB, I can then share over the network, right?
  • Cool. Also, Samba can be configured to share folders on external drives, right? That is, if I connect hard drives to my NAS via USB, I can then share over the network, right?
    Hrm, you know who you need. The( )ad(vertisement).
  • So both of my -ROM drives suddenly vanished today.

    Nothing new has been installed, with the exception of WinXP updates.

    I turned on my computer and my D: and E: drives were completely gone. Device manager says that the drivers are properly installed, but the devices are not connected.

    I have attempted the following:

    - Checking for loose wires.
    - Uninstalling all drivers and restarting computer. Restarted PC and it detected drives, installed drivers, and still no drives appear. Still yellow exclimation points in the device manager.
    - Drive doors still open and close using eject button, but no discs will read.
    - Attempted to do a system restore to a month ago. Still no drive icons.
    - Updating drivers. Windows is retarded and doesn't understand how to do this without me holding it's hand the entire time, but this does not seem to be the problem.

    Possibly related: My XBOX 360 suddenly stopped being able to connect to Xbox Live today as well. It can detect the network, but not the Internet apparently.

    Any ideas?
  • Mr. M, I had a similar problem a while back. After hours on the phone with the manufacturer and replacing the drive, it turned out to be that the $7 ribbon cable thing that connected the optical drive to the motherboard was fucked up. I don't know if this falls under "checking for loose wires," but it might be worth a shot.

    Disclaimer: Unlike yours, my drive wasn't getting power at all; the drive door would not open.

    You don't have any Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%-like software?
  • Mr. M, I had a similar problem a while back. After hours on the phone with the manufacturer and replacing the drive, it turned out to be that the $7 ribbon cable thing that connected the optical drive to the motherboard was fucked up. I don't know if this falls under "checking for loose wires," but it might be worth a shot.

    Disclaimer: Unlike yours, my drive wasn't getting power at all; the drive door would not open.

    You don't have any Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%-like software?
    That's what I mean by checking cables. If it was really a bad cable, it wouldn't get power or be recognized to install drivers in the first place.

    I do have Daemon Tools and PowerISO, but I disabled both of them to see if they were causing the problem. No luck. Unless there is some way to have them recognize drives that the PC isn't....
  • edited June 2009
    That's what I mean by checking cables. If it was really a bad cable, it wouldn't get power or be recognized to install drivers in the first place.
    I wouldn't think that was the case. Power comes over the molex connector and it would only take one of the data wires going bad to corrupt data being sent, that depends on whether or not the same wires are used for data transmission and identification.

    Either way, replacing an IDE cable is pretty simple so it's a good place to start.
    Are both drives connected to the same IDE cable?
    Post edited by Omnutia on
  • That's what I mean by checking cables. If it was really a bad cable, it wouldn't get power or be recognized to install drivers in the first place.
    I wouldn't think that was the case. Power comes over the molex connector and it would only take one of the data wires going bad to corrupt data being sent, that depends on whether or not the same wires are used for data transmission and identification.

    Either way, replacing an IDE cable is pretty simple so it's a good place to start.
    Are both drives connected to the same IDE cable?
    I believe they are. There's a single ribbon cable that runs to both. Maybe I'll stop at a computer shop this week and try switching out the old for a new one.
  • So, I finished design the aforementioned NAS with a cost of just over $300 USD, which I think is pretty damn good. The only issue that remains is that the motherboard I'm using, a ridiculously inexpensive integrated board from Intel, which only has 2 SATA ports and a single PCI card slot. I'd like the option to add more drives to the box in the future; does anyone know of a decent PCI-to-SATA card with at least a couple of extra ports?
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