Hello!
I'm not sure if anyone will be able to help me with this, but i'll give it a try!
To make sure i don't annoy anyone, i'm going to copy-paste from the community info:

Question/Problem: I'm trying to use LJ Talk. Have downloaded the Gizmo thing, but it's not connecting to the internet. I am on my Uni's Residential Network, so i'm thinking that's the problem.

Operating System and VERSION: Windows XP

Web Browser and VERSION: Firefox 1.0.7

Your level of experience: Extreme beginner!!

Duration of problem: Just tonight.

Any steps you've taken to troubleshoot? I've checked the LJ FAQ, tried changing things on my Firewall.

I'm hoping a lot of Uni Networks work in the same way or something so someone might be able to help :)
thanks in advance!

Hi all.

I have an HP Pavillion Notebook running Windows XP, SP2. Over the last few months it's developed a nasty habit of shutting down all of a sudden, especially if I'm doing something quite demanding such as watching videos. I'm reasonably sure this is due to overheating, and I think that cleaning the fan up might be the way forward. My question is two-fold: does cleaning sound as if it would help? And if it does, how risky would it be to do it myself?

I've never tried doing anything with hardware before, so I'm fairly nervous about the idea of messing something up. But I got a quote from a repair shop for cleaning the fan and heatsink, and they said it would be at least £60. This seems a bit steep to me, and since there seem to be quite a lot of guides to cleaning online, it seems feasible at least that I could maybe attempt this myself.

The computer is about 4 or 5 years old, and I'm planning to replace it in the near future, but ideally I'd like it to see me through to the end of the year. I realise that if I start messing around with it, there's always the chance that I will just kill it totally, but it would be good to know how likely that outcome is before I start. Is it worth taking the risk, or should I just shell out the £60?

Thanks in advance!

ETA I should mention that I have the hard drive completely backed up elsewhere, so if it totally melts on me for whatever reason, all is not lost.

Corrected

I just found out that the hard drive on my laptop is burned out, but I'm not even sure that's possible.

So I just have a few quick questions.

1- How does that happen?

2- Since I only just got my laptop last year (sadly last month the warranty ended), should I buy a whole new laptop or just replace the hard drive?

3- Is there any way to save some of the files on it? I'm mostly concerned about the many pictures I had saved onto the computer. (about 3 years worth)

I'd really appreciate your help!

Has anyone installed SP3 yet? I just finished reloading the operating system on one of our work laptops and started running updates, when windows update said "ZOMG SP3! INSTALL OR DIE!".

I remember a few years back all the BS that happened with SP2, so I figured I'd be on the safe side and see if it was worth it yet.

Opinions?

I hope someone can help me. My father's computer, running on WindowsXP, is acting up.
He is not a good user, he never learnt how to do even the most basic maintenance (scanning, defragmenting etc) so that poor machine is usually quite neglected. Not long ago my mother who also uses the machine, noticed the saved .doc files won't open in Word. Basically when you click on them, Word opens but says the file isn't there and so it can't be opened. This is regardless of where the file had been saved. In order to open it n word I have to open it with WordPad and then copy and paste it into a new Word document. But if I save that new one, it still won't open if I try to open it.
I immediately ran the anti virus software (NOD32) which didn't find anything, then I also ran the online Trendmicro Housecall which found:
HTML_MHTREDIR.AW
JAVA_BYTEVER.DE
DIAL_RAS.JE
DIAL_RAS.IZ
SPYW_GATOR.A
I clicked the option to have them removed and I assume they were removed, but the .doc files still won't open. What could be the reason? Some other virus?
My father uses the computer 99,9% for writing .doc files so he is rather annoyed by this inconvenience. Any help and/or suggestions will be very welcome.

Operating System and version: WindowsXP

Your level of experience: intermediate-ish

Duration of problem: about one month

Any steps you've taken to troubleshoot? I ran all scans I could think of. I have not ran ScanDisk yet, though.

So I had to reinstall windows XP and it worked. But now, the mouse and keyboard don't work. I start it up and it gets to the point where I want have to enter my password to log on but I can't cause the mouse and the keyboard don't work. Someone please tell me this is an easy fix!

Question/Problem: My open source programs - first Da Gimp and now Inkscape - keep closing on me. The first thing that will cause it is if I try to open a file from within the program. It will fault and then close. So I've gotten around that by opening the file from within the my documents folder, which opens the program as well. But then if I try to "save as," it will fault and close the program. If I choose "save" everything goes fine.

Operating System and VERSION: Windows 2000 professional

Web Browser and VERSION: Firefox 2.0.0.14

Your level of experience: Intermediate

Duration of problem: With Da Gimp, about 2 months now. With Inkscape, 2 weeks.

Any steps you've taken to troubleshoot? I don't even know where to start.

How do i change my display name for Windows Live Messenger with a gmail account?

I just started using my gmail account on Windows Live Messenger. It signs in fine, and I've verified it. Yet it keeps coming up saying Please Verify Your Account, etc. I go to do this and half way through it says I have already done so (which I know already). It will also not let me edit my display name, it is greyed out so I can not edit it. Please help?

Just a heads up for those of us who travel with laptops for business and or personal use.

Your laptop may now be seized and searched without cause, without a warrant. The data will be archived for possible future use against you in the name of HOMELAND SECURITY.

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9892897-38.html
Here's a breif guide on possible ways to protect yourself. Of course, the best option would be to not store sensative data on the laptop, but rather, keep it elsewhere on removeable storage.

i usually use firefox but i have to use IE for some school programs. it's stuck on some setting that makes the address bar and start menu bar hide. the address bar will show back up if i move the cursor over where it should be, but the start bar wont show at all. how to i make it not do this? how to i make it like old IE where the address bar and start bar are always visible?

Okay, so I'm coming to you guys because I'm not really sure where to go.

I've played around with having a webpage before, and have always used Microsoft Frontpage, which suits me fine. It allows me to learn a little at a time and my webpages get a bit more complex as they grow. Keep in mind that these are personal pages, where I post information that my friends and I can peruse - such as stories we write and so I can share my photography, etc. My last website came down several years ago when I lost access to a friend's computer which was acting as my server, but I've always missed having it.

Now, I changed my earthlink dial-up service to a webhosting service and I'm totally excited about having a website again... except as I'm looking through all the options earthlink provides, I'm getting a little scared. I don't know what half of this stuff means! I know that I should start simple, but I'm also not stupid and I do want to learn. But where do I start? For starters, this talk of MySQL databases has my head spinning. What precisely is it used for?

I know I need to start by asking myself what I want out of my website, and one thing I'd like to do is have a place where I can post my photography in such a way that other people can look at the pictures and post comments on them. I'd also like the process of uploading new pictures to be as painless as possible. Can someone offer a suggestion about where I should go to learn the ins and outs of webpage design? Keep in mind that what I know I've taught myself, and I haven't touched my webpages in several years.

I am looking for a cheap, external hard drive.. What is a good one for under 100$? I was looking at these two:

Maxtor One Touch III 200GB

Maxtor 250 GB

Most reviews for both are good but there are a bad reviews, complaining about it crashing.

After having fetched all of my gmail messages via POP3 into an mbox file, I decided to check to make sure that the number of email messages received matches the number in the mbox file.

So I ran this command to count the number of messages:
$ egrep -c "^From \w+@\w+\.\w+ " gmail-archive/gmail-backup.mbox
48858

I have about 11,800 messages in my inbox, according to gmail, so something is obviously wrong. Either the command I used is wrong and/or something about the way I downloaded is wrong. What is wrong?

Also, the mbox file is 186.6 MiB, while gmail says that only 165MB of my account is being used. What's up with that?

I used the getmail program to get the email in many batches (gmail only allows ~1k to be fetched at a time), if that matters.

ETA[0]: What's a good way to either edit the mbox file or extract just certain messages from it that meet certain criteria? Specifically, I want just the messages within a certain time frame. I can write my own script, but would prefer something simpler.

ETA[1]: I tried grepmail and it gave discouraging results:
$ grepmail . -r gmail-archive/gmail-backup.mbox
gmail-archive/gmail-backup.mbox: 50205

$ mboxgrep.exe -c . gmail-archive/gmail-backup.mbox
51601

This could mean something regarding how getmail has fetched emails. Also, I'm a bit concerned that I can't get consistent counts from anything.

ETA[2]: Duplicates filtered:
$ mboxgrep.exe -c -nd . gmail-archive/gmail-backup.mbox
48807

edit: got this one quickly solved, need no further assistance :)

Howdy! Been using firefox 1.5 for ages, but I finally clicked the update button today. I'm now using 2.0.0.6, and pretty much everything is going smooth.

There is, however, one new feature that bugs me. There's an X to close a tab on every tab now, I don't like this, I was quite happy with just having one red X to the very right of the tab bar, and I'd like to have that back.

I found this extention that seems to do what I want, but I can't install it, since it appears to be for an older version of firefox.

Anyone got any great tips on what to do to get rid of those pesky X's?

I have an Acer Aspire 5100 notebook computer, and for a couple of months now it's been making this loud buzzing noise every once in a while. I am deaf, but this is what I'm told. I can also feel it vibrating when I touch it while it's making this noise. It usually stops after a while. What could this be? I don't seem to notice any problems opening or running programs while this is happening. My father thinks it might be the hard drive. Any ideas?

Hello. First of all, I'm running Vista Home Premium, Internet Explorer 7 (when I'm forced), and the latest version of Firefox on a Dell Inspiron 1525.

My computer's only about a week old, and a few days ago I started up Firefox and noticed it running exceptionally slowly. Only a few websites would actually load, and tons of pop-ups kept appearing. I uninstalled Firefox, then used IE (also running slowly, but at least letting me access websites) to go to the Mozilla website and re-download Firefox. When I started Firefox after re-installing it, things seemed to work fine. However, after I shut my computer down for the night and turned it on the next morning, I had the same problem. Uninstalling and reinstalling the browser seems to work fine, but I understandably don't want to be doing this every time I want to access the internet.

I tried scanning the computer with McAfee; it found one 'potentially malicious file' and tried to delete it but couldn't remove the whole thing. Then, I used McAfee to clear the temporary files (where this file supposedly resided), and thought everything was fine, but when I closed and restarted the browser the problems started again.

Everything else is running perfectly.

I have close to no idea what I'm doing; should I just give up and reboot the entire system? If I did, would that get rid of the problem?

If you need any more details, just ask; thanks in advance.

I have a laptop with Windows XP. I have a folder on my desktop that I keep .jpg and other picture files in, as well as text documents. I generally view the subfolders with thumbnails, and keep the folders named with random pics (under the Customize Folder option, in View on taskbar). Recently, while opening a folder with subfolders, I messed something up and know all my subfolders have no names in Thumbnail view. When I switch to Icons or List, etc. they do, but not Thumbnails.

I have tried removing the subfolders and replacing the desktop folder (called misc crap), but when I try putting them in a new desktop folder using the same name and using thumbs, I get the same problem. I don't want to change the name, but I do want to fix this. Help?

Problem: Setting up a LAN on xp for verizon DSL after resetting router.

I use verizon DSL for my computer. A while back I had an issue and I called up india...err.. the call center. They gave me a new name and password for my router settings. During that time I shut off the routers ability to transmit the internet wirelessly thru my house. Then I forgot the password/screen name they gave me.

Cut to today - I bought a new laptop and would like to use the wireless capabilites of my router. I have a Westell - if that helps. And i pushed in the little pin hole in the back to reset the modem (thus blanking out the indian password - or so i read).

Problem is at that point i couldn't reconnect to the internet. I was receiving packets but I was not able to send it. I assumed this was because somewhere in the router I blanked out my verizon DSL name and password which was set up way back when - when i first got verizon DSL.

I fooled around in network connections but couldn't figure out what I should do to put the verizon information back in. So i went to "creating a new connection" and ended up creating a "broadband connection/Wan Miniport" which took my verizon information in and gave me access to the internet.

However - now i have two icons (and two little network connection icons in my taskbar) - one that says LAN and the other broadband connection. When i restart my internet connection doesn't just pop on like before but i need to find the icon and log on -- like i used to have to do with dial up.

I know theres got to be a way to fix this. Can somebody lend me a hand? I'd like it to be like it was -- with just the LAN icon and instant internet.
Thanks!