Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[Genocidicbunny]

Oh yeah, Napa does get foggy. I had to drive through there in the early morning a while ago. Couldnt see a thing.

Also, how the heck did you sleep with the windows open? I mean, thats pretty damned cold. I wake up in the morning and even when its 65F in the house, I have to turn the thermostat up. I can't imagine waking up and it being something like 40F.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Oh yeah, Napa does get foggy. I had to drive through there in the early morning a while ago. Couldnt see a thing.

Also, how the heck did you sleep with the windows open? I mean, thats pretty damned cold. I wake up in the morning and even when its 65F in the house, I have to turn the thermostat up. I can't imagine waking up and it being something like 40F.

Well in this regard, you weren't too far off when you called me a masochist

In truth, I just feel like I can breathe better with cold air. Where do you live by the way? were you just passing through or doing the whole wine country tour thing?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

passing through. I live in the Bay Area, but I was on my way to Sacramento, had some spare time so I took a detour to Napa.

 

[CCRunner]

I'm trying to burn a video onto a disk but it's not working. Pops out at 98.7%. What causes this and how can I fix it? Does switching disks work?

An answer within the hour is needed. I know that probably won't happen but it never hurts to ask...

 

[PeteAtoms]

I'm trying to burn a video onto a disk but it's not working. Pops out at 98.7%. What causes this and how can I fix it? Does switching disks work?

An answer within the hour is needed. I know that probably won't happen but it never hurts to ask...

is the size of the video more that the memory capacity of the disk? is it too big?

if not, try using a different program i guess.

 

[CCRunner]

No the disc is plenty big enough. It's not a super long video.

Thanks for the response though. I managed to make it work by switching disks. What went wrong, I have no idea

 

[Macha]

Other than the risk of it bursting into flames, why don't you put a laptop on your lap? My understanding is that it's bad for the air circulation, is that correct?

Basically, you increase the risk of internal damage. I am terrible for doing that and have had 2 laptop hard drives, 1 graphics card and 1 network card fail.

 

[Mirc]

There's something weird going on with computer generated sounds on my PC.

I have no idea where this might come from, I suspected it might have something to do with my sound card or with the MIDI on it, but there's something that makes me think it's not that.

Basically, whenever I keep my computer on for too long ("too long" can mean "more than 4 hours" or "1.5 days", but never in the few hours after I (re)start it), and I'm using MIDI software, like software for composing (Sibelius, Finale, Guitar Pro, etc), the rhythm is screwed up. Badly. I mean sometimes it just gives the whole thing a "swingy" feel, but if I don't restart my computer, it will get as bad as to have whole notes shorter than 4ths (which should be, obviously, 4 times shorter)! It seems like the computer is "jumping" ahead, never staying too long on one note but staying too short on all or most notes (and not equally on each, which screws things up terribly).

Interesting enough, that coincides with a similar aspect - when this happens with MIDI software, something similar also happens in games. All games that... how could I describe it? All games that have a "character" that the player plays as.... all those games speed up. A lot.. Like, I'm playing GTA San Andreas and the cars go so fast around me that I can't even cross a street without being hit 4-5 times. It just seems to be normal and at some point, just like in MIDI, "jump ahead" faster than normal. And it doesn't happen in one game, it happens in them all. It happens in Fifa 07, it used to happen in Spiderman 3, etc!

Restarting the computer fixes this. And it doesn't affect recorded/non-generated sounds. For example, I can watch a movie and it will never "jump ahead", or go out of sync.

What could be causing this?

 

[GoodGame]

@Mirc, overheating? memory leak? Though happening with multiple softwares, it's probably hardware related, and probably CPU or mobo related if it's affecting both audio and visual. You never have trouble with the hard drive seeming to stall, or trouble saving files, do you?

 

[Turner]

Overheating's what I'm thinking too. Had a laptop at work that would lose it's clock when it overheated. Made Civ very interesting.

I'd install speedfan, and see if you can monitor your temp. If it's going up when these problems happen, that's your problem.

 

[GoodGame]

No the disc is plenty big enough. It's not a super long video.

Thanks for the response though. I managed to make it work by switching disks. What went wrong, I have no idea

It could actually be a bad set of discs, especially if a cheap brand, though possibly a ram / buffering issue. It might help to look through the program's settings and see if there are ways to increase the stability of a write (usually at expense of write speed or buffer size).

 

[Turner]

Could even be with decent discs. Guy at work hates the Memorex discs because they never seem to work with his burner.

 

[Mirc]

@Mirc, overheating? memory leak? Though happening with multiple softwares, it's probably hardware related, and probably CPU or mobo related if it's affecting both audio and visual. You never have trouble with the hard drive seeming to stall, or trouble saving files, do you?

Hmm.... I never have those problems really, with hard drive stalling or file saving... I don't know.

Overheating's what I'm thinking too. Had a laptop at work that would lose it's clock when it overheated. Made Civ very interesting.

I'd install speedfan, and see if you can monitor your temp. If it's going up when these problems happen, that's your problem.

Could be, but if it's overheating, would it be solved by a quick restart? I mean wouldn't it need some time to cool off? And it ONLY affects stuff like MIDI or other computer generated sounds, as I said it never happens while browsing the Internet, watching videos, anything else than composing music and playing games, really.

I'll get speedfan to see if the temp is normal.

Thanks both for the quick answers, btw.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Okay, I'm arguing with two noobs who say Linux sucks because it "killed" their computers. They won't give any more details. Why would Linux "kill" one?

They're also saying that Windows is perfect, theres no need to improve it. I countered that by saying that Linux is based on Unix, which was one of the first OSes, and that if nobody improved anything, we'd be stuck in command-line.

All right, a week later, I finally managed to convince them that it probably wasn't the OS that did it. Then one of them admits the computer had a faulty plug which blew the PSU.

Yeah, a computer is only as smart as the person using it. (Although one of them took this as an insult -- go figure.)

 

[Turner]

Could be, but if it's overheating, would it be solved by a quick restart? I mean wouldn't it need some time to cool off? And it ONLY affects stuff like MIDI or other computer generated sounds, as I said it never happens while browsing the Internet, watching videos, anything else than composing music and playing games, really.

I'll get speedfan to see if the temp is normal.

Thanks both for the quick answers, btw.

You could start uninstalling one by one and see how the computer reacts.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Playing games usually takes up quite a bit of CPU. Dunno about composing music. Maybe you could check your CPU usage when it goes weird.

Tried googling "games speed up," but got a bunch of softwares for speeding up games. Odd.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Quick question (hopefully)

What do people have against dell?

and

if you had to order a computer from somewhere, what service/company would you choose? (and don't say 'make it yourself' lol)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I think because Dell uses refurbished parts.

I'd get mine custom-made from a store in town. Clicky for URL. Very good reputation.

 

[PeteAtoms]

I think because Dell uses refurbished parts.

Thats news to me, I never heard of that... that seems like a justified reason to not order from dell, but are refurbished parts necessarily a bad thing?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm not sure, but I'll try to answer. I suppose older parts could be used on lower-end computers, but wouldn't be really good for heavy gaming. Either way, it'd make it cheaper and probably a bit better for the enviroment, as it doesn't go to landfill.

Of course, when people build computers themselves, a lot of them rip out parts from older computers. If they're still in good shape, you could save a few dollars.

And another tip -- if you get an older computer, a used one, never install an OS that's newer than it, unless the system requirements are lower. For example, if you have a Windows 98 computer, don't install Vista on it -- however, Linux may be okay, depends on the requirements for the distros.