Pete_C

Windows Experts
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Everything posted by Pete_C

  1. You make your dogs wait for food? I would never get any sleep if they knew they would get fed when I woke up. Mine have a bowl that never runs dry (they let me know if it has). Actually they generally get me up in the morning. I can tell if it is cold or bad weather out because they will sleep in; good weather and they will get me up at dawn. Top that off with the alpha female will get me up if any of them need to go out to do their business in the middle of the night (Rottweiler Lab about 95lbs , jumps on and off bed and stares in my face to see if I am awake yet until I get up). The new pup
  2. Remember, that the color cartridge actually contains three different inks (more in some cases) Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow generally. Since other colors are made by blending these (or near misses causing an optical illusion ) the color of each component as well as calibrated delivery does count. Yeah, most refil kits you have to drill a hole and when done plug or tape over it to prevent the ink from leaking. And getting the correct amount in is very important. There is a sponge inside to hold the ink, and if you overfill, it will leak. Underfill and you wind up refilling it very soon and the par
  3. In the last two days, they have found another sony rootkit and another problem caused by copy protection on other sony CDs. Does not look good.
  4. Also, remember that some of these older drives and motherboards did not support autodetect and you have to enter the correct type (Cylinders, heads, sectors, parking zone) from the data plate on the drive manually. I remember those old large keyboard connectors (DB9?) . I think I saw one on a board which supported Pentium 166 , same with the serial mice. Remember too, that the drive will not show until you partition and format it.
  5. Open my eyes and let the dogs out begins things, but I just do not feel conscious before my coffee. Three Mr Coffee scoops in my Cusinart set to the 1-4 cup flow rate and temperature range, with one 16oz mug full of water ( I figure that is two cups plus one scoop for the pot) . Good amount of sugar and creamer generally, although some days I still drink it black. Breakfast can wait until I see if the OL will be joining me or not.
  6. The first and most important point I have to make is never spray any cleaner on the screen of a monitor or television. It can (will ?) drip down behind the casing and onto any electronics in the way. Most of these cleaners contain vinegar or ammonia, both of which are reactive and can damage your electronics. At a minimum, they will be transferring dissolved material (dirt) from the screen to inside => not a good thing. So, whatever cleaner you choose, you apply it to a soft lint free cloth (not a paper towel if possible, since the wood fiber can be abrasive). I prefer old cotton T-Shirts
  7. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5984764.html?tag=nl.e589 Their other copy protection opens dangerous security holes too.
  8. See the total time 5 s? My bet is that it tried to connect to the server, and for one reason or another at that particular moment it could not get through in five seconds (an enternity in computer time). Most likely cause? Avast automatically looks for updates when it loads up when windows starts. Maybe your firewall is blocking all traffic, or your internet connection is not yet open when it first tries. Second most likely is that at that particular moment so many people are conecting to the server to get updates that it can't get through. Final would be a hiccup where two backbones of the i
  9. I recently read about a researcher who wanted to find out how adults look to a newborn (well not fully newborn since it takes a bit before they can see.). After much research and testing they concluded that initially , babies only see in black and white (The rod cells which see black and white are more primitive and develope before the cone cells which see color) and have severe astigmatism (distortion of objects based on distance). When he applied these distortions to see how a mothers face appears to a nursing baby or one being picked up from a crip, he discovered that it looks just like t
  10. Straight? With Salt (my OL eats all melons with salt)? Sugar? Honey? Hard to really limit it to one thing, so many of those folks have listed are so good and it really varies day to day. Every so often I run into one of those things which I say to myself "I could eat this every day for the rest of my life " ( Like pork loin, pounded flat( 1/8 inch max) and then quick (thirty seconds or so per side) cooked in a hot pan with just a bit of butter and olive oil => Pork Scallopini; or a perfectly charcoal grilled steak). But I think it is the slight differences (the nuttyness of the flour vari
  11. The Human brain is a hugely complex accomplishment and in the great scheme of things a fairly recent developement. In other words, not all the bugs have been worked out yet; the hardware and software both have a habit of malfunctioning. I am not going to get into the pros and cons of religion; suffice it to say that based on my understanding of the human mind - religion is a logical consequence of the existance of the human race. The human mind works with a comparative pattern recognition. It tries to match new incomming data to previously stored events and items. So when there is a new unrec
  12. I agree, if I try refilling my Lexmark ink cartridges they will leak before the first refil is fully used. I haven't found remanufactured ones (other than those which are just refills and not true remanufactures where the rubber seals are replaced. ) in my area yet for it. I have had mixed luck with remanufactured inks. On the Cannon, after market , and remanufactured seem to work just fine. On a previous HP I serviced, it too did not really care, although on photos I could tell the difference (the colors were off if you used remanufactured cartridges). An Epson I encountered had conniptions
  13. In win9x it is C:\Windows\Hosts no file extension. In XP C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts (Assuming C: is your OS or Root drive) You can single left click to select it, hold down the shift key and right click on it and choose "Open with" and choose notepad. Make sure "always use" IS NOT CHECKED. You can manually edit the contents,removing what is bad, then choosing file/ save as and in the file name put "Hosts" with the quotes and under file type choose all files and save to where you found it. But the suggestion of just selecting it and renaming it Hosts.old (you will get horrible war
  14. With the under $200 restriction; you only have a couple choices unless you catch one on sale, very deep sale at that. And it will be an analog, VHS-C with RCA/Svideo connections only.(Probably Panasonic or RCA). I advise against going the route of one of those $99 or under digital camcorders (Probably advertised as 3Megapixel, still and camcorder ...) They have no optical zoom , and limited recording time. Personally; my recommendation would be to check out pawn shops if possible and see if you can find an analog VHS-c camcorder for around $100.
  15. This is normal; no two ink cartridges are perfectly identical. Normally , you must run the alignment test and make manual adjustments when you change cartridges if you want clean crisp prints (especially photographs). In fact, in this HP, it does it automatically by itself, and then prints a page showing you that it is aligned correctly.
  16. I agree, I personally prefer individual printers and scanners. I personally have a Lexmark printer (yes the replacement ink is expensive, but you get more per refill than most other brands; just make sure you have some photos to print when you install them since they dry out if unused) and HP scanner and a cannon printer which uses cheap aftermarket ink (BCI-21) for day to day print (the ink tank holds very little ink, but I can buy the black aftermarket tanks for $2-3 apeice locally). But this person wanted (has always had ) an all in one so that it could be shared by multiple computers (Six
  17. This is on sale through tommorrow at Circuit City for $129 , with an additional $30 rebate (Final cost, including tax of $110) . Originally lists for $269 (there is instore instant $140 rebate). I just finished installing this on a network. Here is my first impression. GREAT !!!. It gives you the option of USB connection to a single computer or ethernet to a router. In the past, with a print server connecting a multi function unit to a network, you could print to it, but lost the scan functionality. However with this unit I was surprised to find out that the scanner is routed and shared. Yes
  18. I tried formatting using the XP disc but it never went past 0%. EDIT: Here's a time line First HDD Set-up Attempt -Blue Screen Of Death 2nd - Hang Up On Formatting 3rd - Window XP Installation Stopped Recognizing the Drive Do you have XP SP2 install cd? If not, you are faced with the 137GB drive size limit. There should either be a jumper to set or you can use the seagate disk prep tool on the CD to limit the drive to the size useable by OS other than XP SP2 .
  19. Download Hijackthis , unzip it to a permanent (not temporary /temp folder) folder such as C:ProgramFiles/Hijackthis/Hijackthis.exe Hijackthis Download, unzip and extract to a permanent folder of your creation such as C:\ProgramFiles\Hijackthis\Hijackthis.exe Run and choose scan and save logfile. Copy the contents of the notepad window which opens and post it here(in the hijackthis section) if you want further advice or analysis of the log. You will see a bunch of entries prefixed by 01 These are your hosts file entries. Most likely they are all entries from a virus set to block things like l
  20. http://fightaidsathome.scripps.edu/ http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/projects...FaahResearch.do http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp So if this is an issue you feel is worth contributing some spare computer cycles to , sign up.
  21. After years of suffering the allegies caused by bringing a mold and fungus infested connifer into the house; last year I put my foot down and told the OL it would be an artificial tree or none at all. So this is the second year I do not have to worry about putting lights on a tree that is just going to make my eyes itch and my sinuses block up for the next month. The other nice thing is no deadline on taking it down, in fact I can just put the whole thing into the store room and drape it with a sheet; or seperate it into its three sections, leave the lights and ornaments on it and box it as
  22. Okay, here is my two cents Read this http://www.mynetwatchman.com/kb/security/Articles/AolVPN/ http://www.maxmind.com/app/faq#aol http://kalsey.com/2004/02/why_ip_banning_is_useless/ AOL uses a pseudo proxy/ pseudo VPN , really bizarre setup. When you do a normal http IP check (like the one moderators on boards like this use) you see a virtual IP assigned by the AOL gateway, kind of like they were running through a proxy server. Regardless of whether they have a dynamic or static IP, they are reassigned a dynamic one by the AOL gateway . There are simple techniques for admins to see the
  23. I once saw a Pensky rental truck parked on a main street , with someone lying on top of it. My curiosity was answered when a block further along, I saw a line of motorcycle officers hiding down an alley . The guy on the top of the truck had a radar gun and radio.
  24. They will probably be investigating this case and argueing over it for the next ten years. One thing to consider is that HIV follows an infectious path similar bubonic plague in terms of how it invades immune cells. They have established that some people carry a mutated gene which with one copy present inhibits the ability of these diseases to enter the immune cells thus giving the individual a limited natural resistance (an ability to actually fight off the plague long enough to recover) . And if they have two copies (one from each parent) they potentially will not even become sick if expose
  25. Well I waited till the new guy on the block with the new corvette and lexus put up his, then I caved and put up two icicle strands, some garland and red ribbon (on the white pilars so they look like giant candy sticks) . Since he has two strands (multi color C-7 ) out I think that is fair. Over the next few weeks, well, I may add a few more strands (like wrap the Pecan tree out front with twenty strands of white flashers, that takes time and effort though I have to climb or get out the big ladder - I have trash bags full of mini lights and a couple C-5 and C-7 strands myself). For now, we p