Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

If its a laptop, it can not only fall apart, it can explode! Fun stuff!
 
This is an exploding laptop!

Computers are mostly unmoving parts, but if you toss it off the top of a building it will definitely come apart. And certain parts of the computer do move, esp. the hard drive and the fans. I've heard about fans falling apart.

Also, about the CD shattering -- I think I got this right, correct me if not -- what happens is the CD spins faster than it can handle. And then the edge is spinning faster than the middle (or vice versa?) and it becomes unbalanced, and it makes a loud noise and explodes. Often this happens when there are cracks and damages to the CD in the first place.

P.S. I wouldn't advise using that CD drive again. There may still be pieces of the CD stuck in the guts of the thing and that's not such a good thing.

Another edit: I also recall reading a story on a message board, about one person who had a computer he was doing some 24-hour loadtest on. And there was a huge glob of dust on the fan or something. And he grabbed what he THOUGHT was the compressed air to spray it out. And it turned out it was actually a very flammable cleaner and the computer went up in fire.

Still another edit: Aha, it's here. Got a few details wrong in my version.
 
When posting screenshots to CFC, does it matter if it is a png image vs a jpeg image?
 
Not really. Its best if you host it somewhere like imgur.com, photobucket.com or imageshack.us
 
I have a mouse with no obvious way to disassemble. The scroll wheel is sticking. I tried blowing canned air through it, but no effect. It's several tears old, though I don't recall exactly when I got it. Any advice on something safe to use to free it up?
 
The only thing I can think of is to try to clean the scroll-wheel with something. But I don't know what, if water would hurt it or cleaning stuff.

EDIT: Look at this?
http://ask.metafilter.com/60765/My-scroll-wheel-hardly-works-anymore
and this http://www.ehow.com/how_2292691_disassemble-mouse.html
http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-apart-an-optical-mouse/

My question: Does it matter if you "safely remove" HDDs like flash drives? Once in a while you can break a flash drive by yanking it. Is it physically possible for that to happen with an HDD?
 
Whenever you disconnect something cable or a slot you should do so as gently as you can. Electronic connections often have a large number of very small pins inside that could be easily bent if you just yank things apart or jam them together.
 
Well, when I say "yank" I mean just pulling it out without doing rthe safely remove thing.

Question: Is there a way to tell when you installed Windows? I tried this and it gave me 11/09/2009 but I don't know if that's November 9th or September 11th.
 
OK, I figured it out, thanks
 
Another question: Is there a way to find all the files related to a program? I googled this with several different terms.
 
So has anyone installed any solid state hard-drives on their PC? As an OS drive? Seeing better OS performance?

Magic 8 ball question: Should I upgrade to Windows 7?
 
Magic 8 ball question: Should I upgrade to Windows 7?

Depends.
a) Can your computer support it?
b) Any features you're interested in, or upgrade just because you can?
 
My question: Does it matter if you "safely remove" HDDs like flash drives? Once in a while you can break a flash drive by yanking it. Is it physically possible for that to happen with an HDD?

You should not be pulling out an HDD when the computer is running. Unlike USB which has a low current and is designed to be plugged in and out, an HDD isnt. You don't want to be plugging/unplugging anything from the PSU when your computer is running. You could fry both the part and the PSU.

Another question: Is there a way to find all the files related to a program? I googled this with several different terms.

On windows pretty much the only way I can think of is to find all files created at a specific time. is there any particular reason you need to do this?
So has anyone installed any solid state hard-drives on their PC? As an OS drive? Seeing better OS performance?

Magic 8 ball question: Should I upgrade to Windows 7?

I personally havent gotten an SSD yet, but only because their prices are still too high. Once they drop under 2$/GB Ill start thinking about it again. I have heard great things about them. Though if you run a RAID 0 as your boot drive, your read/write speeds may not improve too dramatically. Your access times should go up a lot though.

As for Win 7, what are you running now? If you already have Vista, then if you really think you need 7, wait for a sale. Actually, the same goes for if you have XP.
 
I meant an external HDD. lol

The reason I was asking is because I wanted to find some savegame files for backup and there weren't any INI files in the program folder that would tell me where they would be. (It's one of those crappy budget games, I know.) And I checked all the AppData folders that I could think of (also Documents) but I still haven't found them.
 
Yes. The only things I see in there are the program file, the uninstaller, and two DAT files (they're named 00 and 01).

EDIT: And EULA.txt.

ANOTHER EDIT: What happened to the report card here? (Comments say it was shifted one ASCII character up. I don't know what that means.)
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Oh,-I-see.aspx#Pic1
 
It means exactly that. A became B, B became C, C became D...

efnpdsbdz -> democracy
 
As for Win 7, what are you running now? If you already have Vista, then if you really think you need 7, wait for a sale. Actually, the same goes for if you have XP.

XP, but I'm currently a full time student, so I'm thinking about cashing in some discounts. I also have a comp that will technically support 6GB, so I'm interested in giving it a try.

On the Solid State Drive, I only ask because I saw like a 60-80GB one advertised for about $120 on the Newegg deal of the day. I think that's pretty reasonable for the technology, even if maybe it's not an optimal memory storage per $. I'd kind of evaluate an OS SSD as something other than memory storage or system ram, though maybe that's being too generous. But if the flipside is a more expensive Raptor or such for improving OS performance, then the performance per cost might actually be getting sweet.
 
The 60GB Agility on sale on newegg the other day was pretty close to my upper bound in terms of price. If it were not for the fact that you had to get a rebate (which is hit or miss) I would have probably bit on it.
 
Back
Top Bottom