The General "Computer Issues" Thread

[HellCat]

Is that a Compaq Presario? 'Cause it looks exactly like my laptop.

It is yes, a V4000. I've had it since summer 2005.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

How do you change RAM? Just take it out and put in the new one? Closest I've ever come to this is accidentally knocking mine loose in my Pavilion once.

first, you have to make sure you are putting it the right side in, dont force it or bad thinkg will happan. there are a usually white clips on eather side that hold RAM in place, push those outward, the RAM will still be there and you have to phisically pull it out, use a little bit of force and it will come out. Sape prosses to putting it in. use a bit of force untill you hear a click. Close the pins inward and make sure the RAM in fully seated and in not wobbling. Of course make sure your PC in not just turned off but also unplugged from the outlet before you take anything out.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

Is that a Compaq Presario? 'Cause it looks exactly like my laptop.

I do several problems with my laptop. A light which comes from inside the monitor is always shining whenever I'm doing something. It's distracting and I have no idea how it happened and how to get rid of it. And a hinge in the same laptop came loose and I have no idea how to push it back in.

Describe what light you are talking about. is it a backlight? is the screen damaged?

 

[Zack]

Describe what light you are talking about. is it a backlight? is the screen damaged?

I don't think it's a backlight. I was cleaning off the screen one time ago and this weird shine showed up in the far center of the screen.

I think it's a bulb inside the monitor that got damaged somehow but I'm not sure.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

I don't think it's a backlight. I was cleaning off the screen one time ago and this weird shine showed up in the far center of the screen.

I think it's a bulb inside the monitor that got damaged somehow but I'm not sure.

Laptop displays dont have bulbs, they have liquid crystals.
How did you clean the screen? did you spray it with anything?

 

[Zack]

Laptop displays dont have bulbs, they have liquid crystals.
How did you clean the screen? did you spray it with anything?

I used 'electronic cleaning wipes'.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

I used 'electronic cleaning wipes'.

and those are? im not familiar with those.

 

[Mynd Hed]

Whilst moving my laptop just now, I found that a part had broken off the right hinge. It seems to have been held in place by 3 short black rods which end in a thin plastic disc and for some reason the discs have snapped off. I can very roughly put the piece back, but obviously can't adjust the screen without coming off. Obviously this is a problem as without these piece, the internals of the monitor section are exposed

http://i594.photobucket.com/albums/tt30/HC86/P1000342.jpg

What's the safest way to fix this? I'm assuming I'd be best taking it to a repair place.

(Please don't reply to say 'Just get rid of it' because that isn't an option for me. It's the only computer in the house, I'm unemployed and we're still paying for this one)

It's kind of hard to see in that picture, and without being able to compare it to the healthy hinge to see what it's supposed to look like. It sort of all depends on what those three pins were affixed to on the inside of the case and whether you could MacGuyver up a replacement out of something close at hand, but I assume if there were an easy and obvious solution in that direction, you probably wouldn't be asking us.

You already mentioned the obvious solution of taking it to a repair place: if you do this, make sure to get a quote before they start doing any work. If it's reasonably cheap, it's probably worth it, especially if you're still paying the laptop off and won't be able to shop for a replacement for quite some time.

The only other thing I can really think to suggest is the duct tape solution. If the machine is reasonably workable without the missing piece, at least a little swatch of duct tape will keep the exposed section relatively free of dust. (It won't hurt to peel it away and spray some canned air in there every couple weeks either.)

It may look more than a little hoopty, but if you're careful with it that might at least keep the poor girl running until you can afford a better solution. And look on the bright side: some nice, visible, totally ghetto-looking duct tape will make it a lot less attractive to thieves! I work at a library in a bad neighborhood and every once in a while somebody who should know better will leave their laptop unattended to go find a book and come back to find it gone. We try to keep on eye on stuff like that, but if someone just snatches it and runs, what am I going to do, tackle him? Heck no: I don't want to get shot over someone else's laptop.

What I have is what's in the picture, except with a CRT monitor, less memory and I think a smaller hard drive. The processor is a 2.4 ghz Celeron that runs slower than than the 1.73 ghz Pentium M in my laptop. Why is that, are there considerations other than the listed speed?

Yeah, speed is one factor that goes into performance, but the amount of cache memory and a host of other very technical features also factor in.

The Celeron line of processors are those that have just about everything EXCEPT clock speed stripped down to make it more budget-friendly, and performance is naturally going to take a hit for it. Generally speaking, they deliver good bang for your buck for just about everything EXCEPT video applications, which until recently meant "games and video editing" and so most people couldn't care less. With the rise of streaming video, those features they stripped out are becoming more important to more people.

By contrast, the Pentium M line is meant to be a full-featured processor, just smaller and less power-draining for laptops. By most accounts, some of the most talented people at Intel have been working on their mobile processors for some time, so they haven't even had to make all that many performance compromises to do that (price is another matter). In fact, for a while there (not sure if this is still the case) their bleeding-edge desktop processors were more like scaled-up versions of their mobile processors, instead of the other way around.

I'm wondering if there are some cheap things I could do to make this computer run Web sites, especially Hulu, a little zippier. I have no delusions about playing Crysis on it. I've already decided to spend about $50 giving it another gig of Ram, but I'm not sure what kind. I'm also not sure what to do with the 256 megs it already has, would that need to be taken out or could it run along with a one gig stick?

Can you give me a better explanation of why I should ditch the old RAM? Seems like a waste.

How do you change RAM? Just take it out and put in the new one? Closest I've ever come to this is accidentally knocking mine loose in my Pavilion once.

More RAM is generally one of the cheapest and easiest upgrades for an older machine, and will generally give you a lot of bang for your buck, so I definitely recommend it.

Not much more to add to what En Sabah Nur said about why you should probably ditch your old 256 meg stick: it basically just boils down to "RAM is finicky." Mixing old RAM and new RAM might work just fine, or it might lead to an unstable system with lots of bizarre crashes and glitches, or your system might just plain refuse to boot, and there's no really good way to tell.

RAM is cheap enough nowadays that it's just not really cost-effective to worry about holding on to your old stick. You'll get the best stability and performance for your dollar by figuring out how much RAM you want your system to have (make sure to check your motherboard's documentation to make sure it'll support that much-- 2 gig is the standard nowadays, but 1 gig is probably sufficient for an older system if that's all your mobo will support or cash is tight), dividing that by the number of slots you have, and then filling all those slots with sticks of the same size and brand.

For example, if your motherboard has two slots and you want one gig of ram, get two 512 meg sticks. It might be slightly more expensive than getting one 1 gig stick and leaving the other slot free, but then again, it might not be, and you'll get better performance that way since there's less of a bottleneck in data going to and from the RAM.

The physical process of installing them is super easy: just undo the clips holding your old RAM into place, remove it, plug in the new RAM, fasten the clips, and boot up. There are no drivers to install or anything else to fiddle with in the software.

Anything else I could do for cheaper than just going out and getting a new budget PC? Keep in mind that the Dimension only has PCI slots, so getting a cheap AGP video card is out. Right now it has 64 megs of integrated Intel Extreme graphics memory. My Pavilion had integrated Intel graphics and I could not figure out how to get it to play nice with the PCI graphics cards I tried to install in it, everything ran more stuttery with the new cards than it did on the integrated graphics.

The only card I've looked at so far is this, which appears to be the most popular one on Amazon for vanilla PCI:

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-256-P1-N400-LR-GeForce-6200-Graphics/dp/B001U3YIT0/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

Here's Newegg's listing for PCI graphics cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048 1069609642&name=PCI

It looks like the standard price these days is about $40 for a 128 meg card or $75 for a 256 meg-- I'm seeing 512 and 1 gig cards for around that same $75 price point, but they don't have any user reviews which is a little iffy. (Much like speed in a processor, the amount of video RAM a card boasts is a decent baseline measurement of how good it is, but is far from the whole story).

The card you link to is a much cheaper price than I see comparable-looking cards going for, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad: older cards like that fluctuate in price all the time. And in a PCI slot on an older machine, almost anything you get is going to be a big improvement over onboard graphics.

Long story short: I say go for it!

There's a Pentium 4 version of the Dimension 2400. Why wouldn't a Pentium 4 work in mine? You can get those online for $50.

It depends entirely on what kind of motherboard your particular Dell has and what it will support. And unfortunately, as often as not Dell uses nonstandard parts that aren't necessarily very compatible or forward-looking, because Dell doesn't WANT you to upgrade your machine to keep it running for ten years, they want you to scrap it and buy another Dell.

If possible, upgrading to a P4 would definitely give you a very noticeable performance boost, but I'd check your documentation very carefully to see if you can find the specific model number of your motherboard and do some research to see what processors it's compatible with before you buy anything, because I'd hate for you to waste $50 on a processor that doesn't work with what you have (and, worst-case scenario, fries some of your existing equipment before you figure out that it's not compatible).

 

[En Sabah Nur]

RAM is cheap enough nowadays that it's just not really cost-effective to worry about holding on to your old stick. You'll get the best stability and performance for your dollar by figuring out how much RAM you want your system to have (make sure to check your motherboard's documentation to make sure it'll support that much-- 2 gig is the standard nowadays, but 1 gig is probably sufficient for an older system if that's all your mobo will support or cash is tight), dividing that by the number of slots you have, and then filling all those slots with sticks of the same size and brand.

I dont know how true that is. Well first, brands like corsair sell RAM as value and as singles, 1Gig or ram as 2 512 in one package or as 1 dimm module. Usually the 2 in a pack is the cheapest route. But I'm not sure what advantages are to 2 vs 1 dimm or the other way around. I have usually purchased the 2 in a pack simply because they cost less.

 

[Zack]

and those are? im not familiar with those.

They're just regular cleaning wipes for electronic equipment. I may have pressed down too hard on the screen with one and caused a bright white dot to stay on the screen permanently.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

They're just regular cleaning wipes for electronic equipment. I may have pressed down too hard on the screen with one and caused a bright white dot to stay on the screen permanently.

lol 'electronic cleaning wipes' made it sound a lot more complex than regular dust cloths. Yea you may have pressed too hard damaging some liquid crystals there.

 

[wonderfly]

How can I check the system requirements of my computer, to see if they're capable of supporting a new video game? (I'm looking to buy either "Spore" or "Sims 3"...or possibly a shooter game)...

 

[En Sabah Nur]

How can I check the system requirements of my computer, to see if they're capable of supporting a new video game? (I'm looking to buy either "Spore" or "Sims 3"...or possibly a shooter game)...

On your desktop, right click My Computer (Computer in Vista) go to Properties, General Tab. That will give you your CPU type and speed and RAM size. To find out your video card, in the came Properties window, go to Hardware tab and click on Devises button. In Devises window, expand the Display Adapters and it will tell you the type of video card that you have.

If that is not enough, go to Start>Run and type dxdiag.exe (copy paste it there). That will open Dirext X Diagnostic Tool window. In the System Tab you will be able to see all of your system specs. To see your video card specs (cluding how much RAM it has) click on Display tab. it will give you all the video card info you will need.

 

[defunctzombie]

How can I check the system requirements of my computer, to see if they're capable of supporting a new video game? (I'm looking to buy either "Spore" or "Sims 3"...or possibly a shooter game)...

System requirements lab can tell you. It has both of those games in the list.

 

[G. Wen]

Photoshop 6 Help

Photoshop 6 won't let me save anything at 300 dpi. When I try to save it, it gives me this message: "Can't save because of program error." It won't even tell me the error number. I'm running it on a HP Compaq Windows Vista.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

Photoshop 6 won't let me save anything at 300 dpi. When I try to save it, it gives me this message: "Can't save because of program error." It won't even tell me the error number. I'm running it on a HP Compaq Windows Vista.

with this little amount of info, its really hard to tell whats wrong. Are you creating the image? Did you scan it? are you modifying it? try to create a different image and save it at 300dpi. If all else fails, try to reinstal Photoshop, or upate it. The version you have is very old.

 

[G. Wen]

with this little amount of info, its really hard to tell whats wrong. Are you creating the image? Did you scan it? are you modifying it? try to create a different image and save it at 300dpi. If all else fails, try to reinstal Photoshop, or upate it. The version you have is very old.

I took the picture with an Olympus camera, and downloaded it to my computer. The weird thing is, it'll let me save the other downloaded pictures at 300 dpi, but not this specific picture.

 

[En Sabah Nur]

I took the picture with an Olympus camera, and downloaded it to my computer. The weird thing is, it'll let me save the other downloaded pictures at 300 dpi, but not this specific picture.

Weird. Did you try a different resolution with this pic? Did you try to redownload the pic from your camera? The file could have been corrupted during transfer.

 

[Rook]

Weird. Did you try a different resolution with this pic? Did you try to redownload the pic from your camera? The file could have been corrupted during transfer.

Anything special about this particular pic? Was it the first shot, the last shot of that group?

If it wont let you save at 300dpi then save as another raw format, then reopen and try saving it again. Chances are the pic is corrupted in some way.

 

[G. Wen]

Weird. Did you try a different resolution with this pic? Did you try to redownload the pic from your camera? The file could have been corrupted during transfer.

Yeah, I tried those things. It'll let me save at 72dpi, but not 300. I wonder if it was corrupted while I took the picture...