buckdog05
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Posts posted by buckdog05
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Hello! My mom is having an issue with her Toshiba Satellite L305-S5907 laptop where sometimes the optical drive only opens and works after she restarts the laptop. It is running Windows 7 Ultimate.
The drive appears to work fine after the computer is restarted but seemingly randomly stops working. When I pressed the button on the drive before restarting today, the light flashed on the drive but it did not open, and it did not read a disk when I used a paperclip to open the drive.
Soon after restarting about 10 minutes ago, the drive worked but when I just tested it again, it did not work.
Do you have any idea what could be causing this issue?
Thanks!
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I just installed Windows Vista SP2 from a CD Rom onto a Dell computer I had restored to factory settings. It said that SP2 installed successfully, but when I go into the update history, the majority of the updates on the day that I installed Sp2 show up as "failed." Is this OK since the computer does have SP2 and shows it when I go into the "properties" for the computer or should I try to reinstall SP2 or the failed updates?
Thanks!
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Hi I have had that problem once . The pc would work fine here but not at the customers house older home bad wireing. As a last try i changed the psu and that did it. I have no idea why except the psu maybe was not getting enough power to it from there house and it was a old psu.
Thank you very much for the suggestion, her computer actually is in an older house. I might have a power supply lying around that I can try, thanks again!
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On a Dell Inspiron 530S with Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit, sometimes after closing programs on the computer the desktop icons can no longer be clicked on. The start menu works as well as the quick launch icons, and logging off and back on again fixes the problem. This seems to happen when especially if not exclusively when closing Internet Explorer before it fully loads.
I have updated the video drivers and googled to no avail and was wondering if anyone has any tips.
Thanks!
Never mind, I thnk it's fixed after disabling the windows sidebar and Dell Dock. Thanks!
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On a Dell Inspiron 530S with Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit, sometimes after closing programs on the computer the desktop icons can no longer be clicked on. The start menu works as well as the quick launch icons, and logging off and back on again fixes the problem. This seems to happen when especially if not exclusively when closing Internet Explorer before it fully loads.
I have updated the video drivers and googled to no avail and was wondering if anyone has any tips.
Thanks!
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Did you test the memory, swapped out the PSU?
Memory test is great idea, I'm reluctant to buy new parts but replacing PSU is also good idea, thanks.
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If it's a nVidia 6100/6150 chipset, it could be the northbridge that is going down, but that would not explain the noise...
So, when you are at her house, does it happen too? Or is it just when she is (ab)using the PC?
When I was there last week I did not see the problem, although Windows would not even boot then. After turning the computer and having it turn itself off four times, she is back to the endless loop of windows startup error screens, I assume because of damage done by inproper shutdowns.
It's a different issue for me because I don't think I'll be able to see symptoms without getting Windows working, which will take too long for me to do at her house.
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Sound like a harddisk or a cable in that hit's the CPU cooler-fan.
So, turning off looks like the CPU overheating (P4 dual core?).
It's hard to say from a distance, but you better ask her to bring in that PC again.
I opened up the computer at her house and looked for a cable in the fan and didn't see one, but I guess the cables could have transported in transportation. It's an AMD Dual Core CPU. Can you think of any reason besides bad luck that it would have worked perfectly here and not at her house?
I was thinking dust, but that seems far-fetched.
Thank you!
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I have been working on an HP desktop computer with Windows XP that was shutting down on it's on during use and had gotten to the point where it wouldn't even boot into Windows because it was stuck in an infinate loop of choosing "last known good configuration" or "normal startup."
I took the computer to my house and fixed the endless loop with a chkdsk /r and the computer seemed to be working perfectly. I left it on for a long time, played a video on Hulu, upgraded the antivirus program, and noticed no problems on the computer.
I returned the computer to it's owner and she called me saying that the computer was turning off again after getting very loud. This sounds like a heatsink or fan problem to me, but I do not understand why the computer would work perfectly at my house and then stop working at hers. Also, before she was complaining of a clicking noise and said that she could only get the computer to work when it was on its side which does not seem as much like a heatsink problem.
I'm trying to determine if replacing the heatsink is worth it or if I should recommend a new computer. The computer has a dual-core processor and a gig of ram.
Thank you for your help!
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I am trying to implement a macro in Excel so that when certain cells are not filled in the worksheet pops up an error saying they must be filled in before the user advances to the next worksheet in the workbook. I tried to do this with data validation in Excel, but I would like to save the worksheet with a blank cell and have the error message come up after the user worksheet is being used, not when I am editing it. In other words, I can't leave the cell blank after deleting data from it because I get the same error that the users would get.
We want the sheet to work like a web site that requires certain fields to be filled in.
I figure that I need to use a macro to accomplish what I'm trying to but perhaps not? Thanks in advance!
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Sorry! Was not posting again to bump, but rather to give an update but I should have just edited the previous post.
Anyways, the laptop is a Toshiba L300 series L305-S5907. It has a 15.4" Display, Intel® Centrino® Core™2 Duo Processor T3200 2.0GHz, 4gb of ram, and a 320gb hard drive.
Thank you!
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Update-She tried doing the disk checking by right clicking on the disk after booting into Safe Mode, clicking on properties, clicking on "tools," and then clicking on "check the disk for errors" or something similar.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
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I set up my mom's Toshiba laptop running Vista Home Premium up a while back to run backups using a Western Digital External Hard Drive and the built-in Windows Vista backup program and it worked well for a while, but eventually the computer started freezing during backups, to the point where it could only be shut down by holding the power button down.
She unplugged the hard drive and the computer stopped having trouble, and when I came home I tried to fix the problem by running chkdisk on the external hard drive, reformatting the external hard drive, and trying different backup software, but it kept having the same problem.
It also had the same problem when trying to manually copy her pictures folder to the external hard drive. It didn't happen immediately, but somewhere midway through the backup.
I figured the hard drive was bad and set her up with Carbonite Online Backup and she is having the same problem. As she has a lot of files on her computer, they did not get uploaded during the first day she had the program installed, and her computer was working well until today when she texted me this morning and told me that it froze up during the backup again and will not even let her access her Yahoo.
I told her to boot into Safe Mode and run do a disk check on her C Drive, but I was wondering if you have any suggestions if this does not work.
Thank you!
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When attaching a picture to an email, when I go to "my pictures," the pictures come up as thumbnails, instead of coming up in the "details view," and when I change to the "details view," the computer reverts to thumbnails next time I open
"my pictures" within the browse window.
If I change the layout of the folder inside of windows explorer (outside of the "browse" window), my settings stick, but not within the browse window.
I have checked the "Remember each folder's view settings" box within the Folder Options, and tried holding "ctrl" as I closed the folder once I had chose my settings. Any suggestions?
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OS X uses a different file system (HFS+) than Windows. That's the source of your problem.
This might work for you, as I understand HFS+ is just another name for the Ext2 file system. I could be wrong as I'm not a Mac or Linux user.
It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.The "Ext2 Installable File System for Windows" software is freeware.
If that's not correct, then maybe this would do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HFS_Plus#Windows
On Windows, a fairly complete filesystem driver for HFS+ exists as a commercial software package called MacDrive. This package allows Windows users to read and write HFS+ formatted drives, and read Mac format optical disks.[11] Apple has released read-only HFS+ drivers for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 in Mac OS X 10.6.A free alternative to MacDrive is HFSExplorer written by Erik Larsson. HFSExplorer is a useful application for viewing and extracting files from an HFS+ volume (Mac OS Extended) or an HFSX volume (Mac OS Extended, Case-sensitive) located either on a physical disk, on a .dmg disk image, or in a raw file system dump.
Thank you very much for your response, but the drive was actually originally used with Windows, I just plugged it into my Mac to test it.
The Mac will read, but not write files to the drive, leading me to believe that it is NTFS formatted. Sorry for not being more clear earlier!
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When I plug in a 320gb "Smart Drive" external hard drive to an Acer Aspire laptop, I can not get it to show up.
Sometimes Windows comes up with an error message reading "c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe" at the top and saying below "the file does not have program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Set Associations control panel."
Other times the error message doesn't come up, but when I go into "disk management," it says that the disk's space is "unallocated," and that it has a "EISA Configuration."
I can see the files on the hard drive on my Mac and it comes up no problem, and another external hard drive also won't show up on the Acer. My flash drive that I has worked perfectly with a number of computers, Windows and Mac also does not work, at least not all of the time. When I put it in now, I got the same error message and it is showing up as "removable disk" in Windows Explorer instead of coming up with the name that I have assigned to it. When I double click on it, I get an error that says "you need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it."
I ran a scan with Malwarebytes on the Acer and checked to make sure that all of the file types that were in the root of the drive had a program associated with them.
Any suggestions, I'm stumped.
Thanks!
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I'm convinced and will be doing a full install of Windows 7 over Christmas. Thanks for all of the advice!
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I have kind of a strange issue with a HP Compaq nc6400 laptop. When I turn the computer on, the power light flashes on, but the computer doesn't boot.
I've tried removing the battery, which made no difference, but when I tried to re-seat the ram, I didn't see any ram in the slot in the bottom, so I'm assuming that the ram is built-in to the motherboard since the laptop worked fine before it started to have this problem.
I've also tried holding down the power button for thirty seconds, but it's still having the same problem. The laptop had this issue a while back, and it seemed to fix itself, but now it may be dead for good. I don't understand why the power light comes on for a second as opposed to not turning on at all.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
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I am working on an extremely strange problem with the wireless connection on a Dell Studio Laptop 1737. Seemingly randomly, this laptop started having an unreliable wireless connection. Later in the day, it completely cut off. The owners of the laptop took the laptop to a neighbors house, and it connected to his wireless network without a problem.
They figured that their router was bad, so they replaced it. The replacement router didn't make a difference. The neighbor, along with another computer technician brought laptops to their house, and both laptops connected to the internet without a problem. The Studio Laptop 1737 still did not connect, so he installed a USB wireless adapter. This fixed the problem for one day, but then the connection stopped working. The technician thought the problem might have been caused by Windows Vista, so he upgraded (did upgrade, not clean install) to Windows 7.
This didn't solve the problem the internal adapter, but since then the wireless adapter has worked in the computer, although the computer has not been moved since it started working with Windows 7 out of fear of the connection being lost.
I searched on Dell's website, and an updated driver for the wireless adapter for the 32-bit version of Windows 7 does not seem to exist. The 32-bit Windows Vista driver installer package does not install on Windows Vista.
I checked for 2.4GHZ cordless phones, and none are in the house. The network has been tried with and without WPA security. I've tried changing the name and channel of the wireless network.
We are scared that if we send the computer to Dell for service, they will say that nothing is wrong with it, because the internal wireless works at neighbors houses and at a public place, and I can not possibly figure out why the laptop wouldn't work here but it does work at other locations.
The desktop computer that is wired up to the network works fine, and my iPhone works fine when connected to their wireless network.
Do you have any possibly ideas as to how to fix this issue? Have you ever seen anything even remotely like this?
Thank you!
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Regardless if you choose to upgrade or clean install form your upgrade pack, remember to do a disk image after successful upgrade, else you have to install vista and windows 7, if a reinstall is required. Disk image can be done using, third party application, or what's built in windows, access in control panel, system and restore, backup and restore, there's an option to create a system image.
Thanks, I didn't know 7 had that feature.
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@ Buckdog05, you should really consider doing a format and fresh install, rather than an upgrade. It may mean a bit of extra work and planning, but the result is worth it.
@ cluberti, it never tastes like chicken.
What are the advantages of doing a format and clean install?
The computer is not used for too many different things-mainly Office, Picassa, and Firefox.
Thanks!
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Yup, it's a retail copy. Thanks for clearing this up. I was confused because my university sells two different disks, 32-bit and 64-bit, and I figured that it would be the same in retail.
If it's a retail copy, the packaging should contain both the 32 and 64bit installer DVDs, although the only one you can actuallly really use to do a real upgrade is the 32bit disc. If you install the x64 version, it would be a clean install - a valid upgrade, but it would do a clean install.0 -
Hi!
I want to make sure that a Windows 7 upgrade will work before I open the disk. I bought Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade from Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Home-Premium-Upgrade/dp/B002DHLUWK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1257455578&sr=8-1), to upgrade an Acer laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.
The Amazon page did not seem to say if this operating system was 32 or 64 bit, and I wanted to make sure that the upgrade will work without having to do a clean installation of Windows 7.
The processor in the computer is a Pentium Dual-Core, I believe.
Thank you, I don't want to open teh disk, and than not be able to return it because the upgrade didn't go as planned.
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From previous discussions on the same problem, it appears you are better off in the long run reinstalling Windows, this time making sure it installs to C: drive.
How do you do this?
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Disk Drive Having Trouble Opening And Working
in Hard Drive and Removable Media
Posted
Thank you very much for your help.
The laptop doesn't seem to act any differently when it's plugged in or on battery, but when I tried unplugging it I think the drive was also working when it was plugged in.
I might try seeing if the drive works after waiting 30 minutes at the BIOS screen, thanks!