Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 December 30

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December 30

Firefox annoyance

Well, I was messing around in Firefox today, and all of the sudden, the "taskbar" of Firefox (not sure on its name) became enlarged.

Image of what I'm talking about -> http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8180/whatlj7.jpg

Anyone have any idea on how to restore it? Andrewtheart 02:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

What were you messing around with in particular? --Kiltman67 03:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I was just clicking around at the bottom of the screen. Just a bad habit of mine (= Andrewtheart 04:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

First of all it is called the status bar. But I don't know how it could enlarge. - Patricknoddy 8:34am, January 2, 2006 (EST)

I think it might be due to some extensions. Once it happened to me, and I started to disable one by one each of the extensions I had recently installed until I found the one that was bringing up the problem. Then I uninstalled it. Unfortunately I don't remember which extension it was (it happened a long time ago).

If that doesn't solve the problem you could reinstall Firefox without uninstalling it first. That would preserve your settings and installed extensions and repair any "broken" files. I have resolved many issues with the browser in this way. HTH --Pfc432 01:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I want to buy a video card

How do you know which slot type you have?--Taida 03:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

The easiest way is to just check your motherboard's manual, or do a search for your particular motherboard model number on the internet. --Robert Merkel 03:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

If you computer isn't terribly old, you're motherboard should should have at least one of three types, PCI-Express, AGP, or PCI, (there are pictures of each on their representative articles). PCI-Express is currently the newest and fastest bus available, with AGP starting to show its age a little, but still quite common and useful, while PCI is outdated as a graphics card interface. Chances are pretty good you'll have an AGP or PCI-Express slot, but if your PC is a mostly low-end pre-built one, you may be stuck with only PCI. If thats the case, your choices will be extremely limited, and may not be up for playing todays/tomorrows most demanding games. Cyraan 18:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't find the manual but the model number is P4M800CE-8237. I googled that and found nothing.--Taida 18:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

P4M800 is a VIA Technologies chipset for P4/Celeron-D LGA 775. The chipset supports AGP 8X. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

You still need to check the actual board, though. Just because the chipset supports AGP doesn't mean that the slot is physically present, and PCI Express could still be supported by the use of an add-on chip. --Carnildo 02:33, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Registry Corruption

Hi! I have a fairly old laptop here it's out of date but i still find use for it. It runs windows 2000 on it and it has a CD drive problem. When I check through device manager it tells me the registry is corrupted (code 19). I've tried as much as i could; I've tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them; I've tried Microsoft's Support's Method but that didn't help me too well (when i tried to delete the UpperFilters and LowerFilters registries i couldn't delete them). After that I tried this part where you start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe), then HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Enum (or it was ...set\Enum)then go to the top and select permissions and then clicked advance and check the lowest bottom (reset something) and that didn't help either. Any suggestions please? --Agester 03:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

You could maybe try restoring the registry. Just reboot and tap the F8 key right away to get the boot menu. Select "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" to a command prompt and run the command "regedit /restore" (no quotes) or maybe "scanreg /restore". From here you should get a list of dates, just pick one where everything was working okay. Good luck. meshach 05:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I tried as you said. Started in safemode with cmd prompt, and i typed in regedit restore (with the slash didn't help me much) and i got a window that asks me "Are you sure you want to add the information in the restore to the registry?" and if I select yes i get an error window saying "Cannot import restore: Error opening the file. There may be a disk or file system error." The scanreg wasn't detected as a valid command. --Agester 15:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Scanreg is a Windows 9x command, so it wouldn't show up on NT/2000. 68.39.174.238 06:02, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

guild wiki

i saws my friend use guild wiki so can you tell me how 2 get 2 it —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.253.253.64 (talk) 04:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC).

Guild Wiki? Asking proper questions in proper english helps us help you too, you know? Aetherfukz 10:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

4gb ram questions

I use my PC to play games, so my question is, with 4gb of ram, how much time (years, months) i will be able to put the settings of the games at maximum without need to get more ram???

What games? Splintercellguy 11:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

There's not reliable answer to this question. First, some games require more advanced hardware than others although they are released at the same time. Second, Different games need different hardware, i.e. A game with highly advanced AI may require a much more sophisticated CPU than a game with only scripted events, but the latter game may require a better graphics card because the first game uses lesser graphics. Third, noone can predict the future - and the hardware and games market sometimes comes up with new state-of-the-art out of the blue. While more RAM is always better, it only lessens (ingame and between levels depending on the particular game structure of loading its world) loading time. You can't play Half-Life 2 with 12 Gigs of RAM but a 32MB graphics card. Aetherfukz 12:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

So its impossible to give me a expectation of how much time i will "live" with 4gb of ram???

Nearly impossible, yes. A reliable guess, about 2 years. But as I said, in 2 years, while 4 gigs of RAM might still be enough, your graphics card and CPU that you have in your PC today will sure as hell not be enough to play state-of-the-art games, even with a large amount of RAM.
Also, please sign your posts with 4 tildes (~~~~) -- Aetherfukz 13:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

thanks!!! Exdeathbr 15:19, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

How do I check RAM speed?

Could someone let me know how I can check whether my RAM is DDR 1 or DDR 2?--thunderboltz^(Deepu) 06:15, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

SIsoft Sandra is a nice tool to evalute all your computer hardware without having to open up the PC case. Aetherfukz 12:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

CPU-Z might be better if you just need to do a quick check. It can answer the question you have, while Sandra can answer a whole lot more. --Russoc4 16:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

As I recommended to someone else the other day, try Crucial Technologies. Input your make and model of your CPU (or motherboard) and it will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of RAM you have. Also a good place to double-check what the computer programs linked above say, as its good to have confirmation from multiple sources. That CS Guy 02:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Computer games that delete files as a punishment for losing

Many years ago I recall hearing about a two-player (and two-computer, of course) game where the players would "wager" a random file on the outcome, with the loser's file being deleted by the game. I'd like to know the name of this game (if it ever existed, which I grant is somewhat doubtful) and the names of other games where a player must win to avoid data loss (I know that there are some viruses like this, I just can't remember what they're called). Links to more details would also be appreciated. Thanks! 68.5.255.161 06:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Never heard of such a thing. But... What's the fun and risk in that if we can just backup files? — Kieff 06:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I heard about this about a decade ago, so the particular game I'm thinking of would date to the mid-nineties or before, when backing up a hard drive might entail significant effort or expenditure. Even with backups, restoring a deleted file would be an inconvenience. 68.5.255.161 07:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Still not a lot of risk. What's to say you can't just make a copy and stick it in another folder? And isn't it, well, boring? Splintercellguy 11:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Presumably (and in my mind) it would be played on a non-multitasking OS such as DOS, and operate by encrypting the file first (or reading parts of it into memory and then zeroing those on disk) and then restoring those only when/if you won. I don't claim that voluntarily playing a game like this makes a lot of sense, but I'm interested in whether or not the rumors I heard were an urban legend or had some truth to them.

While reading through the virus detection listings of F-PROT 2.something on a 386 from an old institution that was donated by a robotics company I remember reading about a virus called "Casino" that would make you play something or something and trash the disk if you lost. The variants of it had you playing blackjack (2330: [1], [2]), or roulette (According to the Regiſter). There were a few others that made you answer a question and do something evil if you gave it the right answer. 68.39.174.238 06:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC) (PS. Ahh, what is it about Malta? Or Germany for that matter)

I recall reading that Ken Williams' first "flight simulator" would delete itself if you crashed, and this was not very good for sales. I think I read that in some old Sierra Entertainment catalog from the mid-1990s. --24.147.86.187 15:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Not quite the same, but the roguelike game ADOM has a 'true death' feature, whereby your saved game is deleted on death - or actually, more accurately, it's deleted immediately on being loaded back in, so once you do die it's already gone. --Noodhoog 18:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Web pages

Hello,

On the Google homepage it says that is is serching over 8bn something worldwide. Is that something websites or webpages and if its websites approximately how many individual web pages is there worldwide?

thanks, --81.77.220.92 13:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

That's got to be pages. I can't see there being more web sites than people, can you ? Wikipedia, for example, has millions of web pages, but only a few dozen web sites (if each language is considered another site). StuRat 13:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Wait, on just http://www.google.com/, I don't see anything about the number of pages... 68.39.174.238 06:18, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

ISP connectivity

when undersea fiber optic cables are damaged due to natural calamity like earthquake, how to get connectivity between countries like india and USA to run BPOs........ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ajit007 (talk • contribs) 15:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC).

I'm not familiar with this, but countries should have some type of contingency plan in place for stuff like that, perhaps involving satellite communications. Then again, the internet is supposed to be "smart" in re-routing traffic to an alternate route in case a line is cut out... it may result in significant performance degradation but it should work. What is a BPO? That CS Guy 02:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it might be Business Process Outsourcing - in which case, the traffic is just routed elsewhere, but the time delays will be greater, which might not be satisfactory for some companies. x42bn6 Talk 16:14, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Is the Parental Control Program 'Hoopaa' safe?

I am looking for a free parental control program, particularly to monitor my childs MSN messenger account. I found Hoopaa whilst searching. When I tried to down load the program my norton security program noted that it was high risk. I am not very good with computers etc but would like to know if I can down load it safely. rod82.16.96.228 16:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it flags as high-risk because it monitors activity. It would help if you could tell us the exact warning message. Otherwise, I looked around on Google and I think it is clean - but this is not definite. x42bn6 Talk 17:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

My personal advice is to forget the parental "controls" - they don't work. Ever. Why not just have a talk with your kids about how people aren't what they seem on the Internet?--207.75.178.77 20:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree 100% with above user. MSN is relativly safe (compared to a chat room for instance). Children mostly use it to talk to their own friends. It's far better to educate your kids than spy on them. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 02:01, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I might also note that similar things are often VERY imprecise and can make incredibly poor judgement calls on things (EG. "Scunthorpe"/Scunthorpe Problem). Also, (This is a sociology thing and that isn't my field), you may inadvertently let of an "arms-race" where they try and circumvent it, etc. 68.39.174.238 06:21, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Music files' pictures

On my music files, when viewed in "Tiles" view in Windows XP, an image appears on the files next to the name, giving the name of the artist etc; normally it's the WMP logo, but the image is now a blue musical note and "MP3" written underneath the note. How do I change it back to the WMP logo? Thanks, 81.131.37.82 17:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like the icon (picture) associated with MP3 files has changed - possibly the associated program (the program which runs when you double click an MP3 file) has changed too. Try right-clicking on an mp3, and selecting 'properties' from the pop-up menu. In the property sheet that comes up there will be an entry near the top for 'opens with' which determines which program is associated with MP3 files. If that doesn't say 'windows media player' then click the change button and select WMP from the list. That should also return your icon to the standard WMP one. --Noodhoog 18:28, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

DVD recorder to PC

I have some material recorded off the TV with a DVD recorder onto DVD-R and DVD-RW. I'd like to be able to watch these on my PC, but when I try to access the disk I get a warning saying "D:\ is not accessible, incorrect function". Any ideas on how to access these disks? --Nicknack009 18:11, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Your DVD recorder may have a "finalise disk" option - try that. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, that works. Thanks. Now, any idea how to export still images so I can edit them in Photoshop? I've tried CTRL+Print Screen, but that doesn't seem to work. --Nicknack009 20:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

VLC media player has a save-screenshot option. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks again. --Nicknack009 21:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Slashdot trolling phenomenon: Hello World

On the website Slashdot.org there are occasional comments posted anonymously which consist of HELLO WORLD, followed by strings of numbers. It almost looks like a 'numbers station' style message. Just out of idle curiosity I've been googling around for information about these posts, and it seems that Wikipedia used to have some info about it on a page titled Slashdot Trolling Phenomena which has since been deleted, and the relevant info has apparently not survived into the main slashdot page.

Anyone know any info about this, or is it possible to dig up a copy of the deleted page? it's no big deal, I'm just curious really

Thanks :) --Noodhoog 18:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a reference to a classic beginner's programming exercise - namely creating a program that prints "HELLO WORLD".--207.75.178.77 20:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that part I get - I've written enough Hello World programs in my time.. the part I'm curious about is the message that follows. it consists entirely of numbers, broken up into strings of 5 digits. You can see an example of one here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=14975963&sid=181035 (be warned, if you decide to try and decode it, it could be anything - probably something goatse related, knowing Slashdot) --Noodhoog 20:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the most recent archived version in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: Slashdot trolling phenomena - HELLO WORLD. It says 'The "HELLO WORLD" troll posts what appears to be one-time pad encrypted messages in the style of a numbers station.' -- Bavi H 20:00, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

HAH! I NEVER THOUGHT about using the IA to view deleted pages... How lame was that? 68.39.174.238 08:21, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

what is trojan spyware?

What is trojan spyware?

See trojan horse (computing), spyware. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:34, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

How do you find out

how many watts your power supply has? Note: my computer did not come with a manual for my power supply--Taida 20:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It's written on a sticker on the side. You will have to open the case, and you may have to take the power supply out to be able to read that sticker. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

If you didn't buy a "gaming" machine, it's probably a wimpy 250W PSU that your OEM installed to save cash.--207.75.178.77 20:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Your right, it is indeed a wimpy one they put in to save cash. Only 300W. I'm gonna have to buy a new one. The video card i want requires 400W. I want to buy a good power supply so i don't have to keep changing it but one thats still cheap. Which one should I buy? Any suggestions?--Taida 00:17, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Which do you want, cheap, or good? You can't have both. --Carnildo 02:38, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I want a good one so i don't have to keep changing it but i don't want to spend extra money on something i don't need. For example, i don't want to buy one that is so good i will never use it. How many watts should my new power supply be?--Taida 16:11, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Cheap power supplies can list high wattages, but if you look at the outputs of the rails they can be lower than high quality, lower wattage power supplies. A $40 450watt will have 15amps on the 12volt rail, whereas a $60 450w will have 2 12v rails, one with 15a and one with 17a, totaling 32a. BFG Tech recommends a 350w power supply with 12v rating of 22a or more for their 7950gt video card (a fairly high end video card @ $260). This would of course be a *high quality* 350w. As for your question, I would go with something along the lines of an Nspire 450w. You want headroom with the power supply, if your card has a minimum requirement of 22amps and 350w and you buy a 350w with 22a on the 12v, don't expect it to last more than a year if its working 100% of its maximum, think of driving your car at 6000rpm redline every moment you're in it. --PiTHON 20:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)