Forums > Help! > Help me keep my Computer breathing please.

Posted: 29th Aug 2005
perform a system restore!
bash F5 (or is it F8)? as the computer starts, before it displays that loading bar.
you will be given the boot options...

Laugh Often, Smile Much, Post lolcats Always

Posted: 30th Aug 2005
I tried that but there are no prior restore points for some reason. After talking with Jonny UCoF it was decided my hard drive is on its way out so I have ordered a new one and am waiting for it to arrive. When it does I'm going to follow a step by step guide from the Lovely Jonny to fitting and setting it up. YaY! for Fellow helpful poi people.

Feed me Chocolate!!! Feed me NOW!

Posted: 30th Aug 2005
computers are eeevvviiilll

we should have a HoP pen pal scheme lol

Always use "so's your face" and "only on Tuesdays" in as many conversations possible

Posted: 30th Aug 2005
Judging by the fact that the screen resolution and colour is stuck, could it be a video card problem at all?

Any video settings been changed lately or anything?

Oh well, just my diagnosis cos my video card fubared up once and i had to reinstall the video card drivers, which were on CD, so that was ok.

Otherwise, meh

It's better to burn out than to fade away

Posted: 30th Aug 2005
Whenever my comps starts puissing me off I format it. Thats the way to do it, delete its brain and load up a new personality everytime it pisses you off. now if I could only do that with my parents ide be set.

Chief adviser to the Pharaoh, in one very snazzy mutli-coloured coat

'Time goes by so slowly for those who wait...' - Whatever Happend To Baby Madonna?

Posted: 30th Aug 2005

Written by: Brit_Joe

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Whenever my comps starts puissing me off I format it. Thats the way to do it, delete its brain and load up a new personality everytime it pisses you off. now if I could only do that with my parents ide be set.

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Hehehe yeah but where is the fun in that no frustration, no rguing no being told what to do...wait what am I saying, Lets format our parents!! For the good of todays generation!

"Only fools are positive! are you sure? Im POSITIVE"

Posted: 31st Aug 2005
When ever my computer pisses me off... wait, its never pissed me off at all. Bloody Mac user :P

The only thing that has ever gone wrong with a computer that I've owned is a blown hard drive in a 18 year old Mac Classic.

Try re-installing Windows (the errors sound like something has gone wrong in the OS) and then the graphics card drivers. Other than that go here. :P

Have faith in what you can do and respect for what you can't

Posted: 31st Aug 2005
sounds like a video card driver or video card problem, try getting the new drivers for it. How old is the card? basically are you running win98 or XP, and can you tell me the brand?

Do we sleep when we die?

Posted: 31st Aug 2005
my computer went all screwy for a while (rather inconviently a few weeks before my degree show, and then again a few days before.... hehe he he... no it wasn't funny at the time....) but we tried EVERYTHING with the windows usw. (which just f***ed it up that little bit more....) turned out to be the RAM card, it just didn't have enough brain power to run bless it..... now i don't know nothing about computers really, but it strikes me that if it's only doing a bit of what it's supposed to, it could also be that.... but i'll be damned a new hard drive can probably solve any problem, good luck

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.

Posted: 3rd Sep 2005
I'f I could help you I'd come running but its far to technical for me.

Sorry Sweetie but from what it seems your in good hands!

*Thats one of my favourite Nurseries over there,*

Roman, Trippie Hippie,On the way back from Play Festival

Posted: 4th Sep 2005
After many hours yesterday trying to get my computer running from the new hard drive the ever patient Jon and I gave up for the night. It must be really hard for Jon as he is in Kent on the end of the phone with me whining that it still doesn't work

Jon you are a Saint and I love you to bits! Thank-you. Without your help I would have thrown the damn thing out the window.

I can get the old hard drive to run still, hence I'm here typing this, but its still stuck on the 16 bit colour with no cursor, blah blah blah...

Now I need you all to pray for my computers safety for I'm at the stage that if it still refuses to load windows onto the new hard drive it WILL be going out the window!

Feed me Chocolate!!! Feed me NOW!

Posted: 4th Sep 2005


Will ring again a bit later.
*mumble grumble bloody Windows ME mumbele grumble*

Posted: 4th Sep 2005
thats what happened to my comp! then my CD drive made a funny noise b4 dying, then my harddrive dies and wouldnt boot

now got my external as the hard drive, and the original as the external - which works now? id say if it makes things easier and cheaper then do that (as long as i havent missed half of the convo and it has nothing to do with whats wrong). i did have ME but now with the new harddrive i put XP on it which is just so much better

Disclaimer:im not responsible for what i say or do whether it be before,during and after drinking alcoholic substances (owned by BMVC).
Creater of Jenisms(TM)
Virginity like bubble,one prick all gone.

Posted: 4th Sep 2005
bah windows always crashing you wanna be running a sensible OS like linux

finland finland finland
the country where i want to be
pony trekking or camping
or just watching tv

Posted: 4th Sep 2005
Quite right screech!

Which distro? I have gentoo

Unfortunately for me, I have to run on windows most of the time

There appears a flight of dragons without heads. Good fortune.

Posted: 4th Sep 2005
Liquid, the problem was probably only windows ME, its a glorified version of win98, but sooooooo unstable and crap.

been running suse9.3 pro, friend wants me to run Ubaunto

Do we sleep when we die?

Posted: 4th Sep 2005
Skulz, mayhap you need appropriate video drivers installed, to get your colours/resolution back - check the net for the download or install it from CD if you can find em.
then have a chai and a massage.

Laugh Often, Smile Much, Post lolcats Always

Posted: 5th Sep 2005
joneven called me yesterday to see if i had some fixes, if it still does not work, illl have a look at it when i come down to bristol if you wnat?

Step (el-nombrie)

Posted: 7th Sep 2005
I think this is all just a big scam to have an excuse to talk to UCOF for as long as possible.

Well, shall we go?
Yes, let's go.
[They do not move.]

Posted: 7th Sep 2005
I dont blame her to be honest...

Posted: 7th Sep 2005
Do I need an excuse? Can't I just chat to Jon for hours anyway?

I'm suprised that at times Jon didn't hang up on me though because I got a bit narky with the computer after a while.

Feed me Chocolate!!! Feed me NOW!

Posted: 7th Sep 2005
If anyone wants their computer broken btw, Sir_Sheep is quite good at it

Posted: 7th Sep 2005
*Note to self - Keep Sir_Sheep away from computers*

You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.

Green peppers, lime pickle and whole-grain mustard = best sandwich filling.

Posted: 6th Oct 2005
Does anyone know why every 20 mins or so I get a very loud ping sound coming from the computer? its win xp, i cant think what it is, im getting no error message or anything, its just suddenly making the sound and has been doing it for a few weeks

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind

Give a man a fish and he'll eat 4 a day hit a man with a brick and you can have all his fish and his wife

"Will's to pretty for prison" - Simian

Posted: 6th Oct 2005
Have you tried saying "Pong" after and seeing what happens?

Posted: 6th Oct 2005
Guess I'm a month too late to try and help, but did you get your comp issues all straightened out, skul?

Definition of poi- A Hawaiian food made from the tuber of the taro that is cooked, pounded to a paste, and fermented.

Ahnold discussing poi - "It is naht a toober!"

Posted: 6th Oct 2005
Nope.... its still stuck in 16 bit colour and 640 x480 (or whatever numbers the smallest setting is) The new hard drive won't let me install Windows and is just sitting there being lazy. Hopefully some nice geeky man will be fixing it soon. I don't think it has long left in the old hard drive because it keeps crashing and finding more and more errors to moan about. Its a bit like Marvin at the moment.

Feed me Chocolate!!! Feed me NOW!

Posted: 6th Oct 2005
Well.. would you like help fixing it or would you rather just leave it until the geeky man has his way with your technology? I dunno how much has been accomplished yet, but I wouldn't default to bad hard drive, since usually an actually bad hard drive will be making noticeably bad noises. Unfortunately, winderzME-eek was an abomination that MS let loose as the first huge prank of the new millenium (they thought no-one would notice, what with y2k bug and all).

If you want help, post the text of the error messages verbatim. In the mean time, you can try the following steps. Please read through them before attempting them, and I appologize if I'm repeating things you've already done. Boot to safe mode (reboot and tap on f8 at about 1 sec intervals until you get the boot menu) to run some diagnostics.

Once in safe mode, first run scandisk:
1. double-click (open) the "my computer" icon
2. Right-click on the C: drive.
3. choose properties.
4. Click on the "tools" tab.
5. Click on the "check now" button.
6. set the scan to "thorough" and "automatically fix errors"

Let that sucker run and see if it finds any issues. Once it completes, go ahead and reboot just for the hell of it, but make sure you boot back to safe mode. Cause next we run Defrag.

In safe mode again/still, run Defrag:
1. Follow steps 1 through 4 above.
2. click on the "defragment now" button
3. Defrag your C: drive.

Once those have completed, and barring any obviously computer exploding, error causing goblins jumping out at you and laughing as they dance a jig around your dead computer, we'll see if we can correct your video issue.

Close all open windows (still in safe mode) and head to the device manager:
1. Right-click on the "my computer" icon.
2. choose "properties"
3. click on the "device manager" tab
4. click the + next to display adapters, this will give you a list of installed display drivers
5. "remove" each of the listed items in display adapters
6. click on the + next to monitors, to get the list of installed monitor drivers
7. "remove" each of the listed items in monitors
8. make sure "Display adapters" and "Monitors" have nothing in them now.
9. cross your fingers
10. close device manager.
11. cross your toes
12. reboot
13. pray

When the system boots up, it should try and reinstall the video and monitor drivers. If you have these drivers handy, use them. If not, let windows try and find the driver. It might default back to crap, but this will clean the slate for a real driver install. If things worked, you should have proper video now. If not, try installing the proper video driver a this point (monitor should be set to "plug and play", unless you have a specific monitor driver) and see if there is any improvement.

A few caveats.. In my experience, if the display adapter item in the device manager does not specifically say "Display adapters" (case included), then it's likely there's video driver corruption. If you have older ATI drivers, they are a pain to fix. Also, in safe mode, take note of any errors you might come across following the steps, and take note of any splats in the device manager (a splat is a device that has an exclamation point on the icon). Post any of that info here.

Hrmm.. ok.. geeky enough for you? I haven't seen a winME GUI in several years, so I had to rely on google screenshots for some of that info, and I don't know your localized version at all (i.e. Europe vs. American winME), so there may be some inconsistencies in there. I think it should largely be correct tho.

Well.. g'luck.. I'll keep an eye on the thread to see if you follow up on any of this.

Definition of poi- A Hawaiian food made from the tuber of the taro that is cooked, pounded to a paste, and fermented.

Ahnold discussing poi - "It is naht a toober!"

Posted: 6th Oct 2005

Written by: UglyCowsOfFrance

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Have you tried saying "Pong" after and seeing what happens?

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i tried, nothing happened

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind

Give a man a fish and he'll eat 4 a day hit a man with a brick and you can have all his fish and his wife

"Will's to pretty for prison" - Simian

Posted: 7th Oct 2005
does anyone knwo how to get rid of mail recipts, i cant access the srv that the mail recipt wants to go through, and its not in my out box, but it still wnats to keep sending!

its driving me nuts

Step (el-nombrie)