Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread

[Genocidicbunny]

Wow, where'd you see that, magnets ripping people apart? I tried googling it and didn't find anything.

Edit: Interesting thing I found about somebody pulling apart an old HDD to see what was inside and found rare-earth magnets.

I never said those kinds of magnets were feasable to humanity as it stands now.

Some well-known materials that exhibit easily detectable magnetic properties (called magnets) are nickel, iron, cobalt, gadolinium and their alloys; however, all materials are influenced to greater or lesser degree by the presence of a magnetic field.

That means that theoretically, a magnet powerful enough would be able to act on the human body as those it was made of a what we would consider magnetic material.

 

[Macha]

How to seperate MSN and Games for Windows Live? Out of the box usernames are shared between both.

Fallout just arrived which adds achievements to your Live profile. So I set GFWL to remember my Live account (I have one just for Xbox Live, since I never buy MS points, the worst someone could do is buy me stuff or get me gamerscore. A tragedy...). However this changed my Windows Live Messenger settings. My WLM remembers my username but not my password or anything. Anyone to force the two to seperate so I can set GFWL to remember again?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Where's the 'Any' key?

Okay, another one -- near the print screen buttoin, there's a "Pause/Break" button. Nothing happens when I press it. Any use for it anymore? (I think it used to kill apps in DOS when they froze.)

 

[musekick]

Alright, so I'm not sure how many people read my last post about my computer randomly overheating, but I've been working at it since then and I have yet another question:

About three days ago, one of the computer fans started making this really loud and horrible rattling/buzzing noise. I looked it up and most sites said that that meant the bearing was going on it and I'd have to buy a new one. So I just acknowledged that yet another thing was wrong with it and I went on with my life. Last night I cleaned the whole laptop out with compressed air again, and while I was spraying it into one of the vents I could hear it turning the fan and making it buzz/rattle, so that settled for me that it was the fan and I'd have to replace it. Once the comp. was cleaned out I started it up, and now I can't hear anything at all. No buzzing, no rattling, it doesn't even sound like the fans are running. I have it on a cooling mat, and that's the only thing I can hear. It's been running for about ten hours now, so I don't seem to be in any danger of it overheating, but do you think that just cleaning it out solved the fan problem, or do you think the one fan just stopped working? Or could it be something else that I didn't think of?

 

[Cutlass]

I would change that fan. Just because you haven't overheated to the point of burnout yet does not mean that you won't at some time soon.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

How do you change the speed of a case fan? Mine's running at 100% and it's really cool inside and noisy so I'd figure to change it to 80% or so. I googled and got stuff on CPU fan, but it's the case fan that's noisy. I'd rather not unplug it.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Speedfan should be able to modify it. Another way, more physical is to limit the voltage going to the fan. A fan at 12V will be faster than 5V. Id have to get back to you on how to do that, but you can start your googling there.

 

[Macha]

Where's the 'Any' key?

Okay, another one -- near the print screen buttoin, there's a "Pause/Break" button. Nothing happens when I press it. Any use for it anymore? (I think it used to kill apps in DOS when they froze.)

It kills CLI (command line interface) apps. Although in most modern OSes it's is functionally equivalent to ctrl-C at the CL. In older OSes, occasionally Break would work where ^C would not.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I looked at Speedfan and got this. What it mean?

Spoiler :

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Click configure and see if you can change any settings in the fans tab.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Sadly, there's 5 fans listed and I don't know which one to change!

 

[Cutlass]

4 fans are at 0 rpm. Meaning probably not installed. Try the one that's turning.

 

[lndm]

while I was spraying it into one of the vents I could hear it turning the fan and making it buzz/rattle,

A fan shouldn't be turned with compressed air as this can damage the fan. Do you have any comfirmation that the fan is in fact turning now?

 

[musekick]

Do you have any comfirmation that the fan is in fact turning now?

It just kicked on as I was reading your question, so yes. I just find it odd that it was so incredibly loud and now it's almost silent.

Edit: I may just replace the thing anyways. It's acting like it's going to stop working, so I'd rather not deal with even more overheating.

 

[lndm]

I can't disagree with you changing it, that can't be a bad thing. Fans are often noisier when they are restricted due to wind velocity, bearing pressure and temperature.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Question: I found a Vista theme I like (NOT Aero), but it says to install VistaGlazz and then copy the files to a folder. But VistaGlazz isn't compatible with Home Basic. Any ideas?

P.S. This is the theme:
http://vishal-gupta.deviantart.com/art/Vista-Black-for-Vista-Basic-63288112

I followed a few links and it said either VistaGlazz or some trialware. I googled and it says VistaGlazz, VistaGlazz, VistaGlazz, etc etc.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

How do I get to safe mode with networking in windows vista?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I got the Vista Theme thing figured out -- Patched the DLL's.

How do I get to safe mode with networking in windows vista?

Power off the computer. Then turn on, at the BIOS startup, it should give you two or three keys to press. Depends on the BIOS, on my old computer it was F8, I think on my new one it's either ESC or Delete. Try all of them, one of them should take you to the boot menu and you go from there.

If you press the wrong key and end up in the BIOS or recovery partition (if you have one), no sweat, just go back without saving and try again.

Linky

Silly question: I rebooted and then realized I left the BtS CD in. And the boot order is set to CD first. And the CD spun up, but then it just ignored it and went from the drive. How does it do that -- does it somehow detect there's no system files on it and not to bother? My old one would give me a blank screen.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

For choosing Safe Mode, its always the F8 key.

CD's that you can boot off have a bootable flag/sector. The System checks for those.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

When I tried pressing F8 on my new computer, nothing happened.