Posted in Astahost / Asta ANSWERS!
Author: (G)Ram Total-Replies: 0

DvD is not Running in ComboDVD/CD-RW Combo Drive Help: Not Reading DVDs

My HCL Laptop having a Combo DVD/CD ROM, previously CD and DVD palyed and opened very well but from 15 days I don't know what happend...Drive read only CDs...Drive is not reading DVDs..After inserting the DVD after hangingup the laptop nothing happen...Please some body help me...

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: pat23 Total-Replies: 34

Hey all

I need some help and advice, Lately my DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive has been seeming up:

I put in a CD, Works fine.
I Put in a DVD and the drive spins and the light comes on, but nothing happens, i go my computer and it shows the drive is empty.

Is it dieing on me or what is going on?

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: kenobi Total-Replies: 20

Hello. I have bought a new DVD-ROM from LG recently. But after some days it stopped reading any DVD I try. And I tried the same DVDs that it read without any problem just few days ago. And another thing, it reads CDs normally, but this is normal I guess because it doesn't use the same technology to read CDs and DVDs. At first I thought that it might be a software problem because I have installed Nero Image Drive and also Alcohol120% in the time that it stopped to work but than I tried to boot not WinXP with SP2 but a Knoppix Linux from CD and it didn't work either, so I guess it is not a software related problem and therefore it can only be bad hardware. This is waht I think, but it is only my humble opinion. So I would like to know if I am right or if it can be something else. Thanks

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / MacOS
Author: Sarah81 Total-Replies: 8



If I'm reading your post correctly, it sounds as if your parents were the ones who coughed up the money for your computer. And unless they fished it out of a Dumpster, dusted it off and told you to have fun with it, I would say that they were trying to do something nice. But not *overly* nice, because then you'd be a spoiled brat who expected Mom and Dad to fork over whatever your little heart desired *smirk*

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: the empty calorie Total-Replies: 25

I think a new type of floppy disk would be a good development. CD-RW and DVD+RW are just too big and too slow to read and write, and USB sticks and smartmedia cards are just too small. And floppies, handier than the others mentioned, but small on space and a little too easy to bend/break. THis is the reason I like ZIP disks, but the price isn't all that great, and 100MB is just barely not enough sometimes. 200MB would be great.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / GNU/Linux
Author: mastercomputers Total-Replies: 18

You don't neccessarily need a swap partition if you have enough RAM to cover all the programs you'd expect to run at the same time, including the Operating System. 512MB would be my minimum recommendation, but the more the merrier.

For KDE there's KSysGuard (terminal: ksysguard) or KTop, not sure whether these are installed with KDE or they were optional choices.

For Gnome there's System Monitor (terminal: gnome-system-monitor)

These are both graphical user interfaces that are similar to Windows task manager, where you can end/kill running tasks.

If the system has become unstabled but hasn't locked up, you can possibly drop into terminal by pressing:



Login and then you can run commandline tools like:



Read the instructions for these by doing:


or


Where "programname" is the program you want more information on. You'll definitely want to pass arguments for those programs.

I prefer "ps" and here's how I execute the command to display the information I would need:



Then I would juse use the "kill" command to terminate the programs, which I'll show below how to do.

If I know the program name then I would probably just do:



Where PID is the id's returned from running "pgrep" (there can be more than 1 PID, so you may need to kill a few). If nothing shows, the program you were looking for isn't running.

So when you've finished ending the program, "exit" back to the login prompt then press:



and you should return to your desktop, and hopefully the program has been removed.

To access shares, you first need to configure the Samba Host/Client, This process has been made quite easy to do, though you should look up a way to do it under SuSe but if you run into any trouble, you know where to ask.

Test this out first though, you might be able to avoid the setup procedure:

In terminal:


Where "sharename" is the name of what you called the shared directory. Passing the -U argument allows you to specify a username, and possibly prompt for password if password protected.

Your "D" drive is hidden, though Windows can still tell you it's there by viewing it's partition layout (Admin Tools, Comp Management, Disk Drive Management). File System drivers can sometimes allow you to read Linux partitions from Windows, though not the safests thing to do.

Key Ring Manager, is a program for keeping your passwords stored safely on your computer, while being able to remember them for programs you use.

I'm not sure if I've answered, everything, and sorry for having the information all over the place. If I did miss something, hopefully you can clearly say what it is, what you're doing, what programs, etc.

Cheers,

MC

Posted in Computers & Tech / Software / Freeware
Author: docduke Total-Replies: 43

Can you use Linux? I haven't done this myself as an edit, but I've read at least a dozen threads where others have done it. I routinely use loopmount to read the contents of an ISO without burning a CD.

I did a google search on editing iso loop and this was the first hit: Tool to Open and Edit ISO . When Unix was originally designed by Bell Labs, the underlying concept was that everything was a file. Loopmount is the standard method of making that explicit.

Hope this helps!

P.S.: If you really want to do it in Windows, here is a specialized tool that may help: nLite. It is an ISO editor, specifically designed to edit (clean up) Windows XP. The folks on their forum may be able to tell you how to do it more generally in Windows, or a search on slipstream may get you what you are looking for in the Windows world.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / Windows (All Versions)
Author: WeaponX Total-Replies: 25

Unless you are some kind of developer or just want to jump the boat and test out Vista now, definitely wait a while longer until they release some kind of service pack for it. The programmers at Microsoft have put in a lot of time for Windows Vista and I'm sure that a lot of bugs are fixed, but as with all their other operating systems, more are to be found.

One major issue from what I read is drivers. Some of the older devices don't have a compatible driver made for Vista yet (or ever). So this will also require the user to get newer parts for their computer that supports the Vista operating system.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: James_K Total-Replies: 19

I agree with killer if you got the cash get it but it will cost a limb and a arm but it will last long enough so you can grow em back, To me pyost doesn't seem to be quite a hard-core gamer most gamers know that the battle between ATI and Nvidia is never ending and how he related Nvidia to microsoft I will never know yah sure a year ago 128 were go but a year ago I was a year younger a year ago I didn't have this 64 bit Dual core AMD processor a year ago I didn't have these ATI 1800 connected by crossfire (I know there is a lot of glitches you dont have to point it out) a year ago I had the 6600 what I'm trying to say is Technology is evlolving faster then anything (if you reading this then you most likley already know) sure 128 is the recommended amount of VRAM for Quake but who wants to play everything at NORMAL quality when you can have High Or OMG crazy High? And apart from the times you'll go oh SH*T that scared the crap out of me the other times you'll go THESE ARE AMAZING GRAPHICS plus to me the way I see it you'll need to upgrade every 3-5 years with the speed that todays games are evloving and by that time you'll probebly be playing everything on low quality and low rez and you'll be back here asking which graphics card would be better the 10000 by ATI or the 780000GT by Nvidia? Yah right now 512 might seem like a bit much it's not unneccesary but it's nice to have so that you can play games still at good quality in 2 years. You might think jeeze who does this dork prefer ATI or Nvidia? I dont care I just get the better reviewed one if it works and if it's the best at the time that's good enough for me.
James

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: kaputnik Total-Replies: 59

Guess what I've got at home.. lols.. my very first computer.. a Sinclair ZX Spectrum+
The specs are:
3.54 MHz Zilog Z80A CPU

16K RAM

Display: 32 x 22 character text display

256 x 192 pixel resolution

8 colours

Sound: 1 channel, 5 octaves

I/O: Z80 bus, tape, RF television

Storage: External tape recorder

This was absolutely fantastic technology when my folks got their hands on it..
Haven't used it for a while though... wonder if it still turns on...lol

Then in school we got on to the BBC Micro.. the specs for this were:
---2 MHz 6502 processor (quite impressive for a micro at the time)
---32 KB ROM (16 KB OS, 16 KB language)
---32 KB RAM (16 KB in model A, 64 KB in model B+)
---Screen modes (text resolution in parentheses):
---mode 0: 640x256 (80x32), 2 colors
---mode 1: 320x256 (40x32), 4 colors
---mode 2: 160x256 (20x32), 8 colors + 8 "blinking colors"

and the fantastic thing about this was that you could program the things in basic.. they used to read both tape as well as the large disks.. exciting times.. really spent a lot of hours at the computer center just to get round to playing a few of the newer games with flashing colours.. absolutely fantastic..

Then, the first computer I was able to afford was a second hand IBM 700 XD Notebook.. it had 32MB Ram and a 4 GB harddrave.. AND a CD player.. now how cool was that.. ran it on Win98 .. got me through my University and I managed to submit all my papers on time.. but all the while I'd dream of getting a better system.. so I began putting in hours doung odd jobs.. then some regular jobs.. and in about two months I managed to save enough to buy the computer I'm still using... a Toshiba Satellite 3000 X11.. its a good computer and has served me well over the last 4 years.. the specs for this are:
20GB HDD, 512 MB RAM, 1.2 GHz Celeron, DVD Rom, External CDRW, extra external PCMCIA 8GB HDD.. have been running it on XP pro.. but I've just finished getting hold of and burning my first set of Debian and Mandrake Linux.. which I'll be installing after I've taken a backup of all the data on my comp.. TODAY.. hahaha.. I'm nervous..

Another year or so I'll think about upgrading my system again I suppose..

R.A.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: James_K Total-Replies: 31

I think your best guess is to start looking at some of the other hardware components it will probebly something major since usually if there is a hardware malfunction the POST will tell you MB internal speaking to start annoyingly beep my guess is that it could be a faultly processor usually computer tend to shutdown by them sleves because it the processor is over heating although I'm sure thats not that case because your processor must be pretty hightly clocked to be overheating in one second but you might want to check like trying a different one maybe the processor is sending false reading or something like that also keep in mind you FSB could be cracked I shipped my computer ounce and fedex cracked my FSB and it would as a BSD so yah check all your hardware try replacing as much as you can with spare units but make sure they are compatible before you try. Good Luck!

Posted in Computers & Tech / Software / Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware
Author: iGuest-newuser Total-Replies: 94

My norton security is just about to expire in a couple of days. I've been looking at both McAfee and Kaspersky and I'm not sure which one to go with. I've read that Kaspersky really uses alot of RAM, any suggestions?

-question by newuser

Posted in Computers & Tech / How-To's and Tutorials / Hardware related Stuff
Author: RoKeR Total-Replies: 56

The owner of Colossal Storage, Michael Thomas, says he's the first person to solve non-contact optical spintronics which will in turn ultimately result in the creation of 3.5-inch discs with a million times the capacity of any hard drive - 1.2 petabytes of storage!

1.2 Petabyte is a hell lot of space!
For those of you who don't know:
1.2Petabyte = 1 228.8Terabyte = 1 258 291.2Gigabyte

The 1.2Petabyte Hard Disk is expected to be finished within 4 to 5 years from now and would cost approximately $750USD for 1

Read itHere

520 of these COULD hold the whole internet! As of 2002, the internet was 532,897 TB according to the article i read somewhere.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Hardware Workshop
Author: grim reaper1666 Total-Replies: 195

what would be able to do that would be a quantum computer but those at this point point in time do not work properly. they work for short amounts of time. which is like half a second but after that any data made in the quantum computer becomes useless. which means that once they figqure out quantum computers servers, code crackers and many more types of computing areas will use them. hey you never know they might even become home computers think of how fast gta 4 would run on one of those. for those of you who do not know a quantum computer is a computer which is designed to work in multiply dimensions and which means it can do a infinite number of calculations all at the same time so the old method of making a code harder to break by making longer would not work because the process would have speed.. but the problem is that they need to run in a incohenrant state which means you can not have any dust in the computer but that also means that you can not look and also at this fram in time you can not read the data.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / GNU/Linux
Author: snutz411 Total-Replies: 79

I first tried Linux a few years ago, not because I was completely against Windows or anything like that, but just because I had some free time on my hands. I started off with Mandrake 9.0 which was very user friendly and Windows-like. After reading through a bunch of message boards and learning which distros are good for what, I soon realized my current distro was great for Linux noobs. So then I decided to try something a little more advanced like Slackware which I knew had a steep learning curve.

Since then I've been using Slackware as my main OS and couldn't be happier. Of course somethings are a pain in the ass to configure, but that;s Slack for you. If it ain't hard, then you won't learn anything from it.

That's my story, I basically started to learn Linux because I was bored.