Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[civ_king]

you can't distribute cracked software

 

[cardgame]

sure you can... just not legally

What about other alternatives, aimee? I'm sure there's other programs that would do the same thing.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

The past few days, my laptop display has been flickering. Allof a sudden, the display would flicker or turn itself off for half a second to a second, then it would be fine, and happen again five minutes later, and again another five minutes later, etc. What's going on?

 

[J-man]

The past few days, my laptop display has been flickering. Allof a sudden, the display would flicker or turn itself off for half a second to a second, then it would be fine, and happen again five minutes later, and again another five minutes later, etc. What's going on?

It's flickering

Just kidding, I'm not sure. This seems like a hardware issue but did you update the graphics driver recently? I don't think it's the problem but I hope for you it is, because that's much easier to fix than a hardware issue, especially on laptop (how old is it?)

 

[cardgame]

If you haven't already, try rebooting. Rebooting solves a surprisingly massive amount of problems.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

It's flickering

Just kidding, I'm not sure. This seems like a hardware issue but did you update the graphics driver recently? I don't think it's the problem but I hope for you it is, because that's much easier to fix than a hardware issue, especially on laptop (how old is it?)

Computer's approaching two years of age.

If you haven't already, try rebooting. Rebooting solves a surprisingly massive amount of problems.

Rebooting doesn't help.

 

[Fëanor]

It sounds a lot like how my laptop died, the cable to the screen is breaking.

If you got 2 years warranty you should start a RMA procedure ASAP/before the warranty runs out.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The past few days, my laptop display has been flickering. Allof a sudden, the display would flicker or turn itself off for half a second to a second, then it would be fine, and happen again five minutes later, and again another five minutes later, etc. What's going on?

What happens if you put in a Linux Live CD and boot from that? If it doesnt flicker then its likely a driver issue. If it does its likely a hardeware issue. On my old computer sometimes when the driver was breaking (it did that a whole lot) it would flicker.

 

[cardgame]

My volume controls on my keyboard have stopped functioning. Any explanation why?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Did you try unplugging and plug back in, or did you install any weird software lately.

Here is a strange question: When loading torrents back into utorrent, I had one I only downloaded part of because I was not interested in the other parts and I was seeding the parts I had. And I accidentally forgot to uncheck those and they started downloading so I noticed and they were at 5% when removed the torrent. Then I went to the folder and noticed that the files that were currently downloading were their full sizes. Why does this happen?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

It writes the full file as dummy data and as you get sent chunks of the file it replaces them. The chunks arrive in a random order, it's not writing sequentially from start to finish.

 

[Fëanor]

uTorrent->Preferences->General->When Downloading->Pre-allocate all files

If you want to disable it uncheck that box.

 

[cardgame]

rebooting fixed my previous problem. I blame Windows.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks. How does bandwidth allocation in uTorrent work? I once set one of the torrents to high priority but there was no change in the upload or download speeds. The help file says this:

Bandwidth Allocation is an option that makes µTorrent allocate upload bandwidth to the selected torrent job(s) based on the option selected.

Also, if you have a disc, and you dont know if tis a DVD or a CD. Is there a way to tell without putting the disc in a computer and checking the size? Just wondering

 

[J-man]

Look at the reflection on the data side of the disc. The pits on both cd's and dvd's work like a diffraction grating. Because the dvd pits are smaller, the color bands are narrower.

 

[cardgame]

For that bandwidth question, doesn't uTorrent have an offical site like bittorrent does? It should be in the FAQ or their forums or something. I mention it because I haven't any idea

 

[Genocidicbunny]

The bandwidth allocation is for when you have many torrents running at the same time. The ones with high priority will get priority for traffic, but this doesnt mean they will download/upload faster. That still depends on the number of peers the torrent has.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks.

The power turned off again (probably another drunkard running into a power pole; We get those all the time). Computer booted up ok. Should I worry about the filesystem more and bother doing another chkdsk? I did one when I first reinstalled and it looked Ok.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I did do a chkdsk, everything looks fine

Qeustion: I read somewhere that using multiple partitions saved disk space. Is there any truth to this? I tried looking for that article again but I couldnt find it.

 

[Tarkhan]

I did do a chkdsk, everything looks fine

Qeustion: I read somewhere that using multiple partitions saved disk space. Is there any truth to this? I tried looking for that article again but I couldnt find it.

The advantage is cluster size. A cluster is the minimum size for any file on the disk. A disk with a ton of big files uses a bigger cluster size, since it makes it work faster. Also, separating your OS onto its own partitions means you won't lose as much if it should decide it wants to crash and need a re-install.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_02.htm