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I used to follow the processor industry pretty closely, but not buying a new PC in the last 5 years has meant I haven't paid close attention to recent developments. I do regularly read tech news, though, and all I've seen lately is praise for new Intel product lines -- nothing about AMD. Has this grudge match been settled when I wasn't looking? Is AMD no longer competitive? 218.25.32.210 ( talk) 01:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I already asked the help desk, Wifione suggest I come here/try Google Chrome, It works on Google Chrome. My Internet Connection is fine for all other Wikipedia articles/general websites
For Internet Explorer: 8.0.6001.18702
For MSN 09: 9.60.0053.2200
Computer: Compaq Pesario
operating system: Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 5.1: Service Pack 3 BionicWilliam ( talk) 08:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I get "This program cannot display the webpage" messege, and I've tried going on IE with no add-ons through my system tools and still doesn't work. I just download a new Webroot Antvirus with Spy Sweeper update a couple days ago. I removed Trend Micro Antivirus from Computer after a day or to since on of them was freezing my computer a lot. I've also not had any new add-on's for IE and Colorado Article was fine a month ago. BionicWilliam ( talk) 06:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
WP:MPS loads, United States Loads; so no I haven't encountered it. BionicWilliam ( talk) 03:45, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Colorado doesn't try to load at all for me, it go's right to "This program cannot display the webpage" BionicWilliam ( talk) 04:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
News Flash, Colorado just loaded for me :O :D, I mean wierd I didn't do anything abnormal. Thanks for all of guys help/suggestions BionicWilliam ( talk) 04:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello, here are my latest computing problems, sorry to be a nusisance but these are causing me a lot of annoyance.
I have recently moved house and want to set up broadband (ADSL), however several new ISPs websites have told me that there is already broadband on my phone line so they need a MAC code from my previous broadband provider before they can do anything. There is plenty of advice on this online, with numerous websites telling me to contact my previous provider, however I don't have a clue who the provider is so I can't contact them and in any case, any contract would not be in my name and I'm not sure they'd be willing to just dish out the MAC code to somebody who is not authorised.
Is there a way of analysing the phone line to find out who 'owns' it - or can I get round the issue of having to have a MAC code some other way? Cable broadband is one option but not particularly cheap, or alternatively, mobile phone network broadband. I do have a '3' mobile USB dongle but it keeps disconnecting when used on my laptop (it works fine on my PC so I think the problem is related to Windoze).
That brings me onto my next question - why does the '3' dongle keep disconnecting when used on my laptop? The problem is extremely annoying and goes like this: I load up the '3Connect' software and once the USB modem status says 'Ready to connect', I click connect. It works OK and the status says 'Connected' for about a minute then the connection drops out. I go back to '3Connect' and it says 'Ready to connect' so I click connect again and it comes up with an error message that there is a problem connecting and would you like to try again. Clicking OK results in the same message and this error is fatal, in that the only way of connecting again is to reboot the laptop, when I can use it again for a minute before experiencing the same problem. It works fine on my desktop PC, it rarely disconnects and if it does, I can reconnect without having to reboot. I am therefore pretty convinced that it is a problem with the laptop and not the dongle or the mobile phone network these things use (GSM or whatever it is). It is also not a problem with the location, as if I use the laptop in the same room as the PC it won't work.
Both machines have Windows XP, SP2, although both are long overdue a rebuild, which I am dreading as there is so much stuff to load (on the desktop PC at least). I would very much like to ditch Windoze on the laptop as I can survive without Windoze-dependent software on that as long as my desktop still has Windoze. However, will the '3' mobile broadband dongle work with Linux (Ubuntu being my preferred choice)? Has anyone had any experience of using these things with alternative OSs? I don't think the 3Connect propriatery software would work so it would need some kind of generic driver or app.
Next question, are there any significant disadvantages of using mobile broadband over fixed line/ADSL broadband? I think the 3 dongle costs about £10 per Gb but it is pay-as-you-go and I haven't needed to top it up yet so I don't need that much allowance, really just Facebook and general email/browsing, although I sometimes use Youtube a bit to watch music videos (these are usually pretty low res) and I also use Spotify sometimes for listening to streamed music.
Finally, there seems to be some kind of bizarre conspiracy against other browsers on my desktop PC. I used to have Firefox, Safari and my browser of choice, Chrome all installed and working OK on this. However, in the last couple of weeks, something has deleted all the program files. There is no trace of them in C:\Program Files although the Desktop, Quick Launch and Start Menu shortcuts are still there, clicking them brings up a message that it can't find the folders. I am not surprised, as they have been deleted (and not in the Recycle Bin). So, I went to the Google website and attempted to install Chrome, apparantly it only takes a few minutes, and on my laptop, it did (I was using a public WiFi network to download it). On my PC, it downloads the installer and then says 'Installing', with one of those silly progress bars that fill up and then empty again (giving no actual indication of progress) and it never completes. The same goes if I try and install Safari or FireFox. Now this sounds to me like a virus but I did a full scan using my AVG antivirus and nothing was found. I know you are probably going to suggest rebuilding it but that is a last resort and in any case, it is perplexing why these browsers have been removed. Internet Explorer still works but I would rather use something else.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers you have and sorry about the long post, I need somewhere to moan about my computer problems, otherwise I will end up throwing them out the window!!! GaryReggae ( talk) 08:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
You do not actually need to use the 3 Connect software on windows (though it does need to be installed in order for the drivers to be available). You can connect/disconnect using windows built-in networking (on Vista, just right click on the network icon and connect to 1.3G, not sure where it is on XP though). I found this rather more convenient than the 3 Connect bloatware. If you're familiar with programming you can use the RAS functions to handle the connection. I have found Three to been very reliable this last year, though I had a lot of problems previously which I put down the the local cell tower being overloaded. You could try moving the laptop to see if you can get a better signal, or try a USB extension cable. Price-wise I'm using their 12GB/12 month package (cost £80 inclusive of dongle) which is very good value for money if you're a light user (I generally browse without images which is easy to toggle on/off on Opera)
The dongle will work fine on Ubuntu (nothing to install). You just need to right-click on the network icon (top line, right), Edit Connections, Mobile Broadband, then fill in the provider deails. I did have some problems with DNS and had to manually configure /etc/resolv.conf (added nameserver 141.1.1.1) but as I was only doing a test with the LiveCD I never followed it up. The ubuntu forums are very helpful though. Good luck. Kram ( talk) 20:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
This hard drive has too many bad sectors and at some point windows did not start so i got rid of that laptop and retained the hard drive. I bought another laptop, it works well but would not boot from ultimate boot cd. This laptop has cdrw /dvd drive and i burned ultimate boot cd in a cdrw and it worked on the older laptop. Current laptop apparently wont boot from the old hard disk either - it shows windows boot menu with safe mode etc.
So I decided to boot from linux cd and copy data from old hard disk to a usb drive. Damn small linux boots but i dont see the hard drive or usb stick in the file manager - i looked in etc/ and also in dev/. So,I a clicked the green thing near hda1 or hda5 on the widget on lower right corner (does not belong to the file manager), but just could not find the drives.
My next attempt was use ubuntu, on booting it started to read the old hard drive and said "I/O error bad sector 3636657" or something along those lines. There are too many bad sectors so, it is still doing that. I don't know whether ubuntu will eventually start. But if it does start, i could easily find the drives in its file manager.
Another thing i could have done wrongs is that i have misplaced the jumper on the old hard drive. Current laptop has no jumper on its hard drive. I don't know if that causes any of the problem.Perhaps you could please give some suggestions on how to recover data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 ( talk) 10:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
When I boot up, I get a message saying 'Cannot find KBDMPI.DLL. Anyone know what this file does and how I can restore it? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.82.209 ( talk) 17:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I have just downloaded Safari (web browser). I was bit excited when I read on the Wiki article that it is a "graphical" web browser. That filled my mind with dreams. I have always expected more than browsers can give us. Lately when I switched from IE to Firefox I was not disappointed - the spell-checking thing in itself is quite cool. So what more has Safari to offer ? Can I directly adjust colors etc. of my Wikipage or other pages ? What else it will do for me. Thanks -- Jon Ascton (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm minding somebody's house for a week, and doing a bit of programming which involves some 3D models. Blender works fine for me at home, but on his (higher spec) PC, the interface is intolerably slow - there's a delay of about three seconds when selecting an object, pressing a button, opening a menu, and so on. (The actual rendering is very fast.) So I hunted through the processes and services to find some likely culprits, and stopped messenger, ad-aware (he is running avast, too, but I left that on), and some residual service left over from a previous Norton installation. Each time I got rid of one of these processes Blender seemed to perk up a bit, but after a few edits it was back to the incredibly slow interface; and this isn't with complicated models - even if I just have a couple of incredibly simple models with a few vertexes each, it's still like this. He has XP and a Radeon Xpress 200. The Blender version is 2.49. There is plenty of free memory and disk space. I'm on the verge of giving up, but: is there is any known common cause of a slow Blender interface?
Wurstgeist (
talk)
20:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, some research tells me that this is because the Radeon R300 (the Xpress) had crappy drivers, and the Blender programmers were too stubborn to write a workaround, saying ATI should fix the drivers instead, and now ATI belongs to AMD and you can't get updates for these old drivers any more and nobody ever fixed anything. My only solution seems to be to start Blender's "game" every couple of minutes and then stop it again, which resets something or other in Blender's inner workings and stops it being slow for all of the next two minutes. Unless anyone has a better idea?
Wurstgeist (
talk)
00:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Computing desk | ||
---|---|---|
< August 4 | << Jul | August | Sep >> | August 6 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
I used to follow the processor industry pretty closely, but not buying a new PC in the last 5 years has meant I haven't paid close attention to recent developments. I do regularly read tech news, though, and all I've seen lately is praise for new Intel product lines -- nothing about AMD. Has this grudge match been settled when I wasn't looking? Is AMD no longer competitive? 218.25.32.210 ( talk) 01:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I already asked the help desk, Wifione suggest I come here/try Google Chrome, It works on Google Chrome. My Internet Connection is fine for all other Wikipedia articles/general websites
For Internet Explorer: 8.0.6001.18702
For MSN 09: 9.60.0053.2200
Computer: Compaq Pesario
operating system: Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 5.1: Service Pack 3 BionicWilliam ( talk) 08:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I get "This program cannot display the webpage" messege, and I've tried going on IE with no add-ons through my system tools and still doesn't work. I just download a new Webroot Antvirus with Spy Sweeper update a couple days ago. I removed Trend Micro Antivirus from Computer after a day or to since on of them was freezing my computer a lot. I've also not had any new add-on's for IE and Colorado Article was fine a month ago. BionicWilliam ( talk) 06:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
WP:MPS loads, United States Loads; so no I haven't encountered it. BionicWilliam ( talk) 03:45, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Colorado doesn't try to load at all for me, it go's right to "This program cannot display the webpage" BionicWilliam ( talk) 04:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
News Flash, Colorado just loaded for me :O :D, I mean wierd I didn't do anything abnormal. Thanks for all of guys help/suggestions BionicWilliam ( talk) 04:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
Hello, here are my latest computing problems, sorry to be a nusisance but these are causing me a lot of annoyance.
I have recently moved house and want to set up broadband (ADSL), however several new ISPs websites have told me that there is already broadband on my phone line so they need a MAC code from my previous broadband provider before they can do anything. There is plenty of advice on this online, with numerous websites telling me to contact my previous provider, however I don't have a clue who the provider is so I can't contact them and in any case, any contract would not be in my name and I'm not sure they'd be willing to just dish out the MAC code to somebody who is not authorised.
Is there a way of analysing the phone line to find out who 'owns' it - or can I get round the issue of having to have a MAC code some other way? Cable broadband is one option but not particularly cheap, or alternatively, mobile phone network broadband. I do have a '3' mobile USB dongle but it keeps disconnecting when used on my laptop (it works fine on my PC so I think the problem is related to Windoze).
That brings me onto my next question - why does the '3' dongle keep disconnecting when used on my laptop? The problem is extremely annoying and goes like this: I load up the '3Connect' software and once the USB modem status says 'Ready to connect', I click connect. It works OK and the status says 'Connected' for about a minute then the connection drops out. I go back to '3Connect' and it says 'Ready to connect' so I click connect again and it comes up with an error message that there is a problem connecting and would you like to try again. Clicking OK results in the same message and this error is fatal, in that the only way of connecting again is to reboot the laptop, when I can use it again for a minute before experiencing the same problem. It works fine on my desktop PC, it rarely disconnects and if it does, I can reconnect without having to reboot. I am therefore pretty convinced that it is a problem with the laptop and not the dongle or the mobile phone network these things use (GSM or whatever it is). It is also not a problem with the location, as if I use the laptop in the same room as the PC it won't work.
Both machines have Windows XP, SP2, although both are long overdue a rebuild, which I am dreading as there is so much stuff to load (on the desktop PC at least). I would very much like to ditch Windoze on the laptop as I can survive without Windoze-dependent software on that as long as my desktop still has Windoze. However, will the '3' mobile broadband dongle work with Linux (Ubuntu being my preferred choice)? Has anyone had any experience of using these things with alternative OSs? I don't think the 3Connect propriatery software would work so it would need some kind of generic driver or app.
Next question, are there any significant disadvantages of using mobile broadband over fixed line/ADSL broadband? I think the 3 dongle costs about £10 per Gb but it is pay-as-you-go and I haven't needed to top it up yet so I don't need that much allowance, really just Facebook and general email/browsing, although I sometimes use Youtube a bit to watch music videos (these are usually pretty low res) and I also use Spotify sometimes for listening to streamed music.
Finally, there seems to be some kind of bizarre conspiracy against other browsers on my desktop PC. I used to have Firefox, Safari and my browser of choice, Chrome all installed and working OK on this. However, in the last couple of weeks, something has deleted all the program files. There is no trace of them in C:\Program Files although the Desktop, Quick Launch and Start Menu shortcuts are still there, clicking them brings up a message that it can't find the folders. I am not surprised, as they have been deleted (and not in the Recycle Bin). So, I went to the Google website and attempted to install Chrome, apparantly it only takes a few minutes, and on my laptop, it did (I was using a public WiFi network to download it). On my PC, it downloads the installer and then says 'Installing', with one of those silly progress bars that fill up and then empty again (giving no actual indication of progress) and it never completes. The same goes if I try and install Safari or FireFox. Now this sounds to me like a virus but I did a full scan using my AVG antivirus and nothing was found. I know you are probably going to suggest rebuilding it but that is a last resort and in any case, it is perplexing why these browsers have been removed. Internet Explorer still works but I would rather use something else.
Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers you have and sorry about the long post, I need somewhere to moan about my computer problems, otherwise I will end up throwing them out the window!!! GaryReggae ( talk) 08:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
You do not actually need to use the 3 Connect software on windows (though it does need to be installed in order for the drivers to be available). You can connect/disconnect using windows built-in networking (on Vista, just right click on the network icon and connect to 1.3G, not sure where it is on XP though). I found this rather more convenient than the 3 Connect bloatware. If you're familiar with programming you can use the RAS functions to handle the connection. I have found Three to been very reliable this last year, though I had a lot of problems previously which I put down the the local cell tower being overloaded. You could try moving the laptop to see if you can get a better signal, or try a USB extension cable. Price-wise I'm using their 12GB/12 month package (cost £80 inclusive of dongle) which is very good value for money if you're a light user (I generally browse without images which is easy to toggle on/off on Opera)
The dongle will work fine on Ubuntu (nothing to install). You just need to right-click on the network icon (top line, right), Edit Connections, Mobile Broadband, then fill in the provider deails. I did have some problems with DNS and had to manually configure /etc/resolv.conf (added nameserver 141.1.1.1) but as I was only doing a test with the LiveCD I never followed it up. The ubuntu forums are very helpful though. Good luck. Kram ( talk) 20:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
This hard drive has too many bad sectors and at some point windows did not start so i got rid of that laptop and retained the hard drive. I bought another laptop, it works well but would not boot from ultimate boot cd. This laptop has cdrw /dvd drive and i burned ultimate boot cd in a cdrw and it worked on the older laptop. Current laptop apparently wont boot from the old hard disk either - it shows windows boot menu with safe mode etc.
So I decided to boot from linux cd and copy data from old hard disk to a usb drive. Damn small linux boots but i dont see the hard drive or usb stick in the file manager - i looked in etc/ and also in dev/. So,I a clicked the green thing near hda1 or hda5 on the widget on lower right corner (does not belong to the file manager), but just could not find the drives.
My next attempt was use ubuntu, on booting it started to read the old hard drive and said "I/O error bad sector 3636657" or something along those lines. There are too many bad sectors so, it is still doing that. I don't know whether ubuntu will eventually start. But if it does start, i could easily find the drives in its file manager.
Another thing i could have done wrongs is that i have misplaced the jumper on the old hard drive. Current laptop has no jumper on its hard drive. I don't know if that causes any of the problem.Perhaps you could please give some suggestions on how to recover data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 ( talk) 10:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
When I boot up, I get a message saying 'Cannot find KBDMPI.DLL. Anyone know what this file does and how I can restore it? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.82.209 ( talk) 17:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I have just downloaded Safari (web browser). I was bit excited when I read on the Wiki article that it is a "graphical" web browser. That filled my mind with dreams. I have always expected more than browsers can give us. Lately when I switched from IE to Firefox I was not disappointed - the spell-checking thing in itself is quite cool. So what more has Safari to offer ? Can I directly adjust colors etc. of my Wikipage or other pages ? What else it will do for me. Thanks -- Jon Ascton (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm minding somebody's house for a week, and doing a bit of programming which involves some 3D models. Blender works fine for me at home, but on his (higher spec) PC, the interface is intolerably slow - there's a delay of about three seconds when selecting an object, pressing a button, opening a menu, and so on. (The actual rendering is very fast.) So I hunted through the processes and services to find some likely culprits, and stopped messenger, ad-aware (he is running avast, too, but I left that on), and some residual service left over from a previous Norton installation. Each time I got rid of one of these processes Blender seemed to perk up a bit, but after a few edits it was back to the incredibly slow interface; and this isn't with complicated models - even if I just have a couple of incredibly simple models with a few vertexes each, it's still like this. He has XP and a Radeon Xpress 200. The Blender version is 2.49. There is plenty of free memory and disk space. I'm on the verge of giving up, but: is there is any known common cause of a slow Blender interface?
Wurstgeist (
talk)
20:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, some research tells me that this is because the Radeon R300 (the Xpress) had crappy drivers, and the Blender programmers were too stubborn to write a workaround, saying ATI should fix the drivers instead, and now ATI belongs to AMD and you can't get updates for these old drivers any more and nobody ever fixed anything. My only solution seems to be to start Blender's "game" every couple of minutes and then stop it again, which resets something or other in Blender's inner workings and stops it being slow for all of the next two minutes. Unless anyone has a better idea?
Wurstgeist (
talk)
00:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)