Technical Questions

I can't use the back/forward page option on my computer. Anyone know any quick and easy fixes? They're still visible on the top of my screen but they're just shadows now, not highlighted.

Disregard my last post. I now have a return button.

My laptop says it is charging when it is plugged in... but it never does charge... Does this mean the battery is toast?

That is the most likely scenario.

Is it a Lithium Ion battery, or a nickel cadmium? If it's the latter, then I would definitely suspect the battery.

In rare cases, the charging circuit in the laptop can go bad.

Another thing to check would be the power transformer on the electrical cord itself. This would be something to check if the battery in it is new and it still can't seem to recharge.

We had a gizmo at work that we thought was sucking batteries right & left; took us awhile to realize the power adapter from the outlet to the unit was only feeding juice on a slow trickle and wasn't recharging anything worth a damn. The charging light came on and everything.

If you have one of those battery checker gizmos from Radio Shack, they have that dial that can go to 12, 15 or even 22.5 volts. The output of the power transformer to the laptop should be labeled on the wall plug side - like 14 or 18 volts D.C. current. You plug it in and check the other - power adapter side with the battery tester wires. If it doesn't instantly get the needle to jump to 'good', you got no juice.

Try NOT to hold the tester wires on that adapter plug for too long - you may make a good circuit overload.

Thank you all...

I am prety sure its the battery - I have had in plugged into two different power cords and outlets throughout the house.

I have had this laptop for 3 years now and bought it used (it was a student laptop for two years prior to a new lease here at Dunwoody).

Three years and always plugged in? Most likely it's in need of replacement. You got your money's worth.

Not always plugged in - just this past week when I noticed it wasn't charging... but Yes I have definately gotten my money's worth out of it (only paid $400 fully loaded)!

Bwahahahahaha!

KC you may know this if I unplug my hard drives expit for the one I am kicking up to Windows 7 will all the Info on the others when I plug them back in still be good??

and also if I am running 32-bit right now and go to 64-bit what will that do for my info on the other computer?

I know that xp is a fat32 file format what are the file formats for the new windows 7?

any one that can help that would be great I have done the check I am good to go on the 64-bit and the 32-bit version I have ran all the checks and done alot of research and have not come up with alot of the answers I am looking for!! lol

like always!

Yes, the info on your other drives will be fine.

Obviously the drive you install windows 7 on might be an issue, if it reformats or repartitions the drive upon installation.

Windows 7 64 bit is fine as long as you have a 64 bit processor. File formats do not matter, I'm sure Windows 7 is capable of reading them all (if it didn't, I'm sure everyone would have complained by now). Anything from FAT, FAT32, NTFS and so on. I forget the new Windows File system name.. doesn't matter though.

Good luck on the upgrade.

Thanks For the help and Faster still then asking there help desk lol!!

Still have not gotten anything back from them lol!!

No problem, sometimes it just works that way on here.. others.. might be a day or two before I check in and read all the messages.

Might be slow the next couple days, Christmas and all you know.

If I remember right win7 requires ntfs, at least that's what te upgrade docs from xp say. So if you're using fat32 it will have to be converted to ntfs before upgrading. If you ca do it, go with the 64 bit version cuz it relaxes the 4gb ram limit.

errrr.....

I had some big issues on my laptop *using old one right now*

I installed windows7 ..everything was fine for about 2 weeks...

now....

katie was on it today....locked it all up ...so i powered it down...

can't get started in a safemode...

locks up on classpnp.sys on the screen like this one....

doesn't show agp440.sys

http://z.about.com/d/pcsupport/1/0/Y/4/-/-/safe-mode-windows-7-3.jpg

I've got no idea on what to do....and a little nervous...ok a LOT nervous of googling it and trying to figure out what to do..

uhoh....

can you try system recovery?

2 B HONEST....i don't know how to even start with that..

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html

Use Method 2, since I know you installed windows yourself.

when I upgraded from Windows 7 starter to Windows 7 - I lost a couple programs that were on the computer when I bought it - I don't know if they were apart of Windows 7 starter and just not on the regular 7. AND I lost all pictures that I had on the laptop too - There were only a dozen or so but the upgrade deleted them.

I did not backup before upgrading.

thanks...I'll try to get to it this weekend...who knows what i've got in store with storm and all

wierd too, that malware that attached itself to my laptop last month is gone ?? knock on wood. I did some Microsoft scanning that took hours and it didn't seem to help. I didn't use the laptop for 2 weeks cause I didn't have time to run other stuff to try and get rid of it. I turned it on one day and it just worked. no constant popups. Something must have happened in the Microsoft background.

geeesh Kitch, that totally sucks! I know the feeling. hopefully KC can direct you.

Also, for kids computers, I'd suggest the following option when you give them their own pc.

Windows SteadyState.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Essentially whatever you do on the computer (install programs, surf the net, malware gets inadvertently installed, etc) is undone on a reboot.

ooooh thanks KC, I just got Whitney a laptop for Christmas on EBay. It won't be here til Saturday though :frown: they wanted $73 to ship it overnight.

HP Pavilion dv6768SE White Special Edition 15.4"

2 GB / 250

AMD Turion 64 X2

with Vista Premium

I know nothing about processors - is this gonna be a slow one or fast?

I was so iritated with netbooks/notebooks saturating the market right now. It was hard to find a decent laptop inexpensively. The best deals I saw on netbook/notebooks were through cell phone companies. WIFI built in and very cheap with a 2 year contract. I woulda done that instead of buying this one for more $. Verizon and AT&T were priced a lot less and I can be online from anywhere all the time.

I just tried to bookmark that post and I was told I didn't have access to do so. Hopefully I can remember when her laptop comes.

Those are ok specs.. I haven't heard much about the amd turion, but it should probably be sufficient for standard computing needs anyway.

You might check to see if there's a free upgrade to windows 7 for it. Vista can be a bit of a resource hog. 2 gigs of ram is just about the minimum to run Vista.

very good specs. should be comparable power-wise to your old laptop.

kc, the turion is just the mobile version of the athlon 64 (from an old amd fan who's only intel machine exists because it runs mac os x better)

I might've asked this question already...

I am trying to get my hands on a dead Mac G4 at work. It's the 1st generation G4 Mac in the acrylic slate-colored case. My idea is to try and find a PC motherboard that will fit in the case an build my own Windows PC mod from scratch. I've had lots of recommendations to go to www.newegg.com for parts and purchases, but I am trying to find out if anyone has already attempted this same case mod with a similar Mac. Anyone out there know a link to someone who already done it?

I haven't seen one before. I know I have a G3 mac at home I was thinking of doing the same thing with....

do they use atx power supplies?

I'll have to look at mine to find out. Just guessing, I'd say no.

Power supply is fried, anyway - otherwise we'd still be using it at work as our iTunes jukebox.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=301112

link on power supplies in g4's. Looks like at least some of them are atx. Only problem might be mobo size an connectors out the back.

I'm not looking to upgrade the G4 - it's officially 'retired'. The only internal components I may keep in it is the speaker and the DVD Drive.

I'm planning on swapping out the power supply to a new one 'made' for whatever PC Motherboard I can find to fit in it. The hard part is just that - finding a Motherboard. Without trial-and-error sizing, I dunno how I can come up with a 'compatible' board for the case.

here's a link to someone who did the opposite - mounted a G4 motherboard & parts inside an oversized PC 'Box' -

 http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/SonofFrankenMac/son_of_frankenmac.html

I have a Gforce grapx card for sale if anyone is looking it is a small older one about 2 years 256k has dvi and svga out and svid out!! nice card jsut upgraded to a 1gig! lol

hell ya!! more power! by the way the one thats for sale if anyone wants it I can give specs on it! at that time I am thinking 50 bucks for it should be good! still works is a Nvidia chip set!

PCI express so its all good!

I found a couple links for one guy's version of converting a Mac to a PC - personally what this turkey did was barbaric - he basically shredded the aluminum frame to fit the components he HAD, instead of trying to find components that actually FIT.

http://homepage.mac.com/cycline3/pc-to-mac/index-part-1.html

http://homepage.mac.com/cycline3/pc-to-mac/index-part-2.html

WOW what a Hack job!!

THe case looks Kool but so dose my Lexine case! WHo needs Apple!

so today...spent a long time trying to fix it myself...gave up...

called HP for help...spent another 1 hour on the phone with a guy from INDIA...he was cool...

turns out...have a bad Hard Drive...under warrenty...the wanted to mail me a new one...just the hard drive?? not a whole new laptop?? ok......

called up geeksquad at bestbuy...said bring it in...we'll do the work for ya...no cost..covered under HP's warrenty as well..

I was going to suggest it was the hard drive, but I didn't want to scare you. Plus as soon as you say it is a bad hard drive and it isn't, you tend to lose credibility, heh.

Glad to hear it's getting repaired for free. I had a hard drive go bad in a dell machine before. Same scenario, I knew the drive was bad, talked to tech support in India, convinced them it was a bad hard drive, and they sent me a new one in the mail.

maybe i should have done it myslf...but figured always better to have a professional do it for me....

I'm just wondering....did i do anything to fry it??

hard drives usually die from unintended drops while they're spinning. if it hasn't been dropped, its probably nothing you did.

That or an already weak sector on the disk. It can happen over time if you get a drive that has a flaw.

Generally though, if the laptop is turned off and you accidentally drop it, the hard drive will be ok. If the laptop is on, running, and accessing data (whether that's windows doing it's thing or you saving or reading a document) and you accidentally drop it, there's a good possibility the hard drive would get damaged.

And now for something completely different. I found out I can send/receive email on my wii, along with sharing Miis and whatnot.

Does anyone want to share Wii codes?

thats interesting

I didnt know geeksquad did warrenty stuff at no charge to you.

that happened to me. I think I had it on sleep mode and not all the way off when it slid off a chair and hardly tapped the floor. sucked.

Hey Kitch, wasnt that a new laptop?

I paid $5 to be on the internet through the WII - I havn't messed with it much. Should again. thanks for the reminder. How do we share codes?

I'm game.

july....didn't buy warrenty thru best buy.

If I bring in a cord to plug my laptop into the wireless router box will it pop up anywhere that I plugged into my workes network to get on the internet, like a new device found message or anything? The computers at work won't let me download flash and I want/need it to do some stuff and there are no speakers at work. I bring my laptop to read e-books at night it would just be nice to get on the net with it too but I don't want to get busted for plugging into the system.

it depends on how secure they have their network and how well monitored it is. they almost certainly *can* monitor it. its just a matter of whether they *do* monitor it, and if you can't do flash, i wouldn't be surprised if they do.