my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » Computer Won't Start (Page 4)

This topic comprises 6 pages: 1  2  3  4  5  6

Author Topic: Computer Won't Start Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 09-13-2004 02:02 PM                        SP2 should have cleared up most of your OS related problems. NT stability is worth it. 98SE may not even be able to use your entire hard drive depending on how large it is. I hope it was Blaster and I'm not wasting more of your time. I see so few problems with Windows infections/etc that I forget a lot of stuff.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 09-13-2004 05:34 PM                     I couldn't live without a scroll wheel on my mouse. A third button that can be set up similar to a scroll wheel is alright. On the rare occasion I have to use a computer with an old style 2-button mouse I go nuts whenever I have an application open that requires lots of scrolling.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 09-13-2004 05:43 PM                        I must be the only person who dislikes "wheel" mice. The wheel gets in the way and isn't as convenient as a "real" third button for applications (mostly X11-based) which require a 3-button mouse. I normally use the keyboard (Pageup/Pagedown) to scroll through web pages and such. I must also be one of the few who prefers keyboards which put the "control" key in the place which is occupied by the "caps lock" key on most PC-style keyboards (immediately to the left of "A"). Does anyone with a clue actually _use_ the caps lock key?  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 09-13-2004 07:35 PM                        Agreed on the third button issue. Most wheels don't make very good buttons. Although the $8 Wheel Mouse Optical I've got has a wheel that works pretty good as a third button. The wireless optical tilt wheel sucks big time as a button though. It's hard to find a three button optical mouse, and I refuse to use a ball mouse. I guess in the last 8 years I've grown to like optical mice (again, remember the first mice that were optical) enough that I'll put up with a subpar third button.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 09-13-2004 10:17 PM                     I'm thinking about getting a new Logitech MX500 (I think that's the model number) laser-based mouse. It's supposed to a lot more accurate than regular optical based mice, and it reportedly doesn't have any of the glitchy problems optical mice have with some slick, shiny surfaces. quote: Steve Kraus Compared to work DSL which is an "always on" type the home DSL is a PPPoE connection (not sure if that matters) and has been fairly reliable. Connection was solid when I plugged back into it directly by-passing the router. So something is up there but no way to tell if it's just crappy software or a virus. Steve, I could be reading this wrong, but are you saying you're connecting to your DSL line with the router and then just doing it with the computer straight? If so, I'm not sure how you're managing that unless you have a fixed IP or something like that. My SBC DSL account requires one or the other of two things. If you're going to run the DSL modem's network line straight into the PC, then the Enternet 300 software or some kind of PPPoE software has to be used to gain a connection. But if you're running your connection through a router, like me, you don't install any of that software on the PC at all. The PPPoE settings, account info, etc. are all entered into the Cable/DSL router. I was told if you're using a router and have Enternet300 installed it will cause all kinds of hell. Frankly, I'm much happier to not have any of that software installed on my machine. A bunch of it is just spammage shit --especially all that junk that companies like AOL and Earthlink stick on machines. Those guys make their software just hog up a user's computer. To hell with that!  |  IP: Logged Ron Yost Master Film Handler Posts: 344 From: Paso Robles, CA Registered: Aug 2003 posted 09-13-2004 10:58 PM                     I don't mean to hijack Steve's thread, but since Bobby mentioned SBC DSL. I have Charter Pipeline cable-modem service (highest speed, whatever that is) and am considering going to SBC DSL. Only reason is it's about $20 a month less. I'm perfectly satisfied with Charter, but I could stand to save some cash. I'm within 2-miles of the local SBC exchange (I think that matters in connection speed?). What'cha think? Would you switch-over?? Thank You .. and sorry, Steve. Ron Yost  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 09-14-2004 12:56 AM                    Well, let's see. The connection at home is Earthlink DSL (which means COVAD in my area, on SBC-owned lines). DSL modem plugged into computer. PPPoE software on computer requires clicking just like with a dialup connection. If you don't do this there is no connection (I'm sure there is something somewhere to cause the connection to be made on boot but that's different than an always-on connection.) Perhaps with a router added the router would keep the connection always live but it's not normally. The connection at the screening room is SBC Yahoo DSL. As the service was originally set up the DSL modem was also plugged into directly into the computer. Connection is always on. Turn on the computer, go to an internet program and the connection is there. Of course, since then I have added the firewall/router but I have not had personal interaction with the SBC setup software since I installed DSL. I have also attempted to add the same firewall/router here at home but to little avail and have gone back to direct connect. But this is not working right either. Some sort of buffer problem after looking at maybe 2 web pages. That's the thing I thought was a virus. Tonight I went and got anti virus software to check the machine. It found some stuff on my old HD (which of course the old W98 OS was oblivious to) and I thought ah ha...that is how I got infected. But alas removing these had no affect on whatever is glitching up the machine so it is not a virus after all...unless it's one McAfee doesn't know about. I would reload XP but the OEM disks are missing--I almost returned it the first night for that reason--salesperson assured me they were in the shrinkwrap but they weren't--but I ordered some from the manufacturer. I do have an XP Pro disk here but I don't want to totally change the machine in case I do have to return it. Store burned me a DVD/R with the OEM stuff but I can't read the ghost files. My other brainstorm was this: Make my old HD primary and do a fast reload of W98SE on that. The idea being that if that runs fine then I can rest assured the hardware is ok and something just got boogered in XP. But after a very smooth and fast reload and the normal number of reboots that entails and then coming online on XP to collect some drivers for this motherboard (MS-6741 in case anyone cares) for some reason it doesn't want to boot on that HD only. This much fun (NOT! ) must end soon so this is either going to show light at the end of the tunnel or it goes back.  |  IP: Logged David Buckley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 525 From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2004 posted 09-14-2004 02:22 AM                        Some notes in no particular order. Daryl is absolutely correct; compared to all previous home versions of Windows, XP is a massive advance in reliability and stability. Its unfortunate that you are not experiencing that benefit, but you will get there. Its true; folks can argue over whether SP2 is a XP killer, or activation is evil, but those side arguments do not alter the underlying fact that XP is the best windows to date, in all sorts of ways. DSL - PPPoE is the usual underlying connection mechanism of DSL connections. In the general case, DSL is DSL. The only difference between always on and dial on demand is how you choose to run your end of the link. If you have a DSL modem, then from Windows point of view, its just like a regular dial-up modem, but it works a bit quicker. It has all the same Windows settings that a regular modem has, and the normal default setting is that it "dials up" when you open IE, or some other application that wants internet connectivity. If you use an external router, then everything changes. From the perspective of the Windows PC, you have a permanently connected ethernet (or USB) connection, just like you were on a LAN in an office with thousands of PCs. Whether you are always on or dial on demand is set in the router. The routers I am familiar with have a checkbox on their web configuration screen, like this: On this router, if you dont tick always on, then the router will drop the connection after a configured period of inactivity. Although there is a school of thought that says you can use a software firewall to protect machines, I'm a hardware man myself, and think you should always have an external firewall whern you have an internet connection. Although I have no experience of the product you have, and the thought of MS making a firewall fills me with dread. Frying pans and fires spring to mind. It is a truism that Network Address Translation (NAT) as practiced by just about every el-cheapo DSL router (and their expensive bretheren) is the single greatest thing that has happened to improve security of windows PCs, as long as it isn't configured to allow random incoming connections. Stick a router in the way of a DSL connection, and everyone benefits. It is a simple fact that having a Windows/XP machine connected directly to the internet is scarily dangerous. Being charitable about it, Windows/XP is a big piece of software, and it has lots of holes in it. There are twats out there who like to exploit these vulnerabilities, and it turns out that non-currently patched non-proper-firewalled DSL connected machines are in abundant supply, and can be used to make money for the bad people. A non-currently patched non-proper-firewalled DSL connected machines is not only a pain to its owner, but a pain to everyone out there on the internet, as such machines are reconfigured from being servants of their owners to servents of bad people. IT professions (amongst others) tend to be quite impolite about the owners of such machines. If a machine as above is left on the 'net for a few hours, it will likely be discovered and hijacked. And then used for abusive purposes. Yes, thats where most of the spam comes these days, from DSL connected machines with naive owners. Just as an example, a random line out of my spam wall: Honeypot <burton@tex.com> caught <mmgtdyicpryn@163.com> at 68.89.189.244, and that IP address is... adsl-68-89-189-244.dsl.hstntx.swbell.net. Just another DSL user with an unprotected machine. And if you've still got self-closing task manager and msconfig windows, you still have a virus or trojan.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 09-14-2004 02:54 AM                     What difference does it make if your ports are blocked via software on your HD running from RAM or external hardware with the instructions running on whatever temporary memory it has and stored on a ROM chip? *prepares to be educated* Oh, and on Charter Pipeline vs Digital, I also have Charter Pipeline, only had for a month but love it. the 3 Mbps service ain't cheap-$45 a month on top of my basic cable bill-but its worth it in my opinion. My recomendation is to find out what connection speed you could expect with the DSL service you are looking at. Then find out how much it would cost to downgrade your cable internet service to that speed and compare prices.  |  IP: Logged David Buckley Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 525 From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand Registered: Aug 2004 posted 09-14-2004 04:11 AM                        The difference is - there isn't one. Unless your PC gets compromised... Or there are ports exposed "around" the software protections, which is possible given the way that XPs IP stack is (cleverly) constructed, making for easy plug-ins, allowing for on the fly filtering, packet modifying and monitoring. Although the el-cheapo routers may not be perfect, and there have been many reports of vulnerabilities, in practice they are still useful enough to protect the PC(s) behind it. So my choice, and advice, would be to spend the few extra bucks over zone alarm to get any hardware router.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 09-14-2004 10:12 AM                    The home DSL is like dealing with any other modem, only faster. What was said about DSL through a router or firewall, where the system sees it as like simply being on a LAN, that is how my office DSL is even when I didn't have the router/firewall. The connection was simply there and none of the appearances of dialup are present. Nothing down in the lower right. Nothing that symbolizes being online. Now whether that is still PPPoE underneath I don't know. But at least it seemed like a different animal. Are there different types of DSL modems? Is it possible that whatever connecting and logging in business is simply taken care of by the modem itself? Sort of like having a router do it? As for the Beast, that self closing task mgr etc. went away with a rollback. Symptoms at present are: Long pause on startup culminating in an error message that "Dr Watson" has crashed / Do I wish to msg Microsoft. Dr. Watson apparently is some sort of diagnostic utility built into Windows over the years. Besides the crash message the system is not functional until I kill some other Dr Watson processes via task mgr (which seems to be ok now). Serious problems with the internet connection regarding "no buffer space available" which happens after just one or two web page views, or email checks. Sometime repeated replots will get past it; usually not. Disconnecting and reconnecting can help. It's a particular bear to get to the point of reading and posting this note. Brad's script that checks for people in the chat room (window at lower left) went to the IE "unable to connect" shortly after getting into the forums. Also, when shutting down there is some program which is unable to close...I will have to note the name. I agree it sounds virusy but McAffee failed to clean it. When I get the OEM disks (if I still have the machine) I'll reload. Right now I'd be satisfied in knowing the hardware is ok which is why I'm disappointed my attempts with W98SE running off the other drive (my old one) haven't been successful as a few days running that way would confirm the hardware. I did get it running but unable to get the on-MB Ethernet port working and that's sort of a bare minimum to make the machine usable. Tried to get my Linksys card to work but now I'm back to it not wanting to boot from that drive, with or without the extra card.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 09-14-2004 02:52 PM                    OK...OEM recover disk arrived FedEx this morning but haven't had a chance to do much with it except to learn that it's not autorun nor anything obvious on it as to what on it to run. It's says it's a bootable CD but my machine doesn't look to the CD or DVD drives on boot. Anyway I can make that happen or do I need to create a boot floppy with CD driver...or does that even exist in XP?  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 09-14-2004 03:00 PM                     If you go into your machines BIOS at startup you can change the boot sequence. I'd tell you how exactly but every bios is different.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 09-14-2004 03:43 PM                    Ah, but I don't get to see the BIOS except for a big "e" logo (for eMachines). Presumably there is a key to bring it up (DEL didn't) but I will have to research it.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 09-14-2004 05:36 PM                     many times its F1 or F2.  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 6 pages: 1  2  3  4  5  6

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.