A question about copying DVDs (legally, mind you).
My college comedy troupe produced a pair of DVDs while I was there. Recently one of the group's other alums contacted me seeing if I could dupe a couple copies for her parents.
It would be great if I could do so myself. Now, I have access to a laptop that has a DVD burner on it, but it has no other shiny disc drive. Can I still use it for copying? If so, how can I do it?
Depends.. how much free space is on the hard drive of that laptop? Cos then the easiest way is to copy the whole DVD (since your troupe made it yourself, there won't be any copyright protection on it, so no need to rip, right?) onto the hard drive, and then burn in a second step. (AFAIK, most burning programs like Nero recommend burning from the hard drive anyway, since it reduces the risk of errors.)
If there's not enough free disk space, I'd say it depends on the burning software that's on there. Nero seems to come along with most burners, and seems to be easy to use. Maybe the Help section explains how to copy a DVD with only one disc drive.
HELP?! whenever i play games on my computer i get an error message about the game and have to end task it happens with any game i put it whats the problem?
There's an error on line 42 of the game.
In other words, you didn't provide enough info. What's your config (OS, graphics card, etc..)
What game?
What error message?
Also, search google for the specific error in combination with the game.
Sometimes if you have a firewall (like ZoneAlarm), it prevents the game from reaching out to the internet like some sneakily do. I had this problem with the original Black & White until I turned off the internet access for it.
Question about wireless access (...again). I've been bouncing around a few wireless places recently, and I've noticed that at one particular cafe, the connection seems to hang up every so often. I'll try opening a page, and it'll just spin and spin and never bring up the page... but it won't say "page can't be opened," either. To get it to work, I have to disconnect the connection and then re-... um... connect it. From what the machine tells me, the reception is good at this place, so I assumed there was some problem with their equipment or some such.
However, this problem has now spread to an area where previously, the connection was superb. So I'm wondering- could it be me? If so, how can I fix it?
Any ideas are appreciated.
Another hard disc crash - the second in about six months. How nice to be rewarded with that on Christmas morning. I had some "Unusual activity detected" just before a Paltalk crash the night before, but I ran Norton anti-virus and it didn't find anything. I'm not sure if that was the first time I brought it up since then. It appears to be a hardware problem.
Fortunately, after the last crash, I decided to get an external hard drive and have been backing up fairly regularly. Especially because I had just finished scanning 1500+ slides to put them on CD for the rest of the family for Christmas gifts. I had started that project once already, before the first crash took everything.
This time I only lost all the stuff I'd done that week, which wasn't too much. Called Dell and the first thing I said was "Ultimately, this is going to come down to having to replace my disc drive." After a few hours, iterations of trying things, and a few return phone calls, Dell decided I would have to replace the drive. At least this time they are replacing both of them at the same time. (I use RAID 0, which puts half the file on one drive and half on the other. Gives you much more space and better response time for the video stuff I do, but is riskier for these very reasons -- if one drive goes, that's it.) Now I just hope my new Backup Restore software works. Microsoft's never has. Hopefully, this time it won't take three beeks to get it back to where I want it.
I know this is rather insignificant compared to what a lot of other board members are going through right now or recently.
I should get the drives in a couple days. I guess I didn't realize how much time I spent on that computer at home until it wasn't available.
Sparrow47 - It might just be a case of "hotspots". Even in the same conference room here at work people get varying reception quality.
Brought over from legal musings:
By ScottN, going off topic. on Thursday, August 24, 2006 - 10:00 am:
You know, not everyone uses AOL, so not everyone knows that "sn" means "screen name". In fact, quite a few of us despise AOL and refuse to have anything to do with it.
By Polls Voice, led off topic by ScottN on Thursday, August 24, 2006 - 01:22 pm:
ScottN probably has a secret contract with MSN Messenger...
As a general rule I to dispise anything Microsoft but I still have MSN and have had it for almost 10 years. I've tried AOL and EARTHLINK but I can't stand them so I keep coming back. Usually I end up buying some new piece of equipment and getting 6 months of free MSN service and then I end up only having to pay for 6 months out of the year. My biggest complaint is that AOL is to slow and expensive and EARTHLINK is just to slow. Mind I still use dial-up. I know, I know stop shuddering now but as I say I'm using 6 months of free service and I'M CHEAP!!!!
Is there any technique/free software for removing 'watermarks' from computer images? It's so annoying to have those things plastered across the face in a picture. No, I'm not trying to misrepresent them as something of my own, I just want to see the image clearly.
By technique, I mean something other than going in and trying to edit each little bit of the image, which doesn't work well on faces, anyway.
I've got a video file that apparently has the wrong file extension listed for it. Is there a way of finding out the file type other than just changing the extension for every type and hoping to hit it?
helpppppppppp, can't get my D drive to play my dvds or my ol dos games that ran on windows 95,98,2000...can someone help or recommend some patch or file or dll?
RE: Butch: Right click the video until you see "Properties"...then click it...and you'll see what type of file it is.
John, that didn't help. I suspect the file is corrupted. Thanks for trying.
I've developed an obnoxious problem with my mouse. This seemed to start out of nowhere last night. Sometimes when I left click, the mouse behaves as though I've double clicked.
As you can imagine, this is causing problem when doing things like closing a single tab in a window, or trying to get back into a minimized window only for the thing to go right back into the taskbar.
I've checked the mouse button setting in control panel and none of the settings have changed.
I seem to recall this happening with another mouse but I can't remember what the solution was. I have a feeling that we had to replace it.
Has anyone else ever had this problem?
For a little more information, I ran a full Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware scan as well as a full Norton Anti-Virus scan. While Spybot found the usual tracking cookies, none of them found any Viruses or Trojan horses.
The problem is intermitent. It will go for a while where it doesen't bother me and I'll think that something I've done (whether unpurpose or not) has fixed it. Then it will flare up and I'll go through several windows (or whatever) as though I'm double clicking like mad.
One potential cause I've considered could be dust under the left mouse button somehow causing problems.
Other then that, I'm not sure what else it could be.
Could sticky keys be affecting your mouse for some reason?
Another thing you could try is to reinstall the software and/or driver for the mouse.
Oddly, the problem seems to have gone away for the most part. Although, you know how it is, as soon as I say this it'll come right back ;).
maybe your mouse was overheating... or a cat messed with it too much
I recently purchased a new computer. One thing that's missing in this new one that my old one had a program for writing cds (well, more cd-rws) called DirectCD. This was a useful program that could prepare a cd-rw in such a way that you could write to them as though they were a large floppy drive or portable hard drive.
Unfortunately, this new computer doesn't have that program or one like it. While XP can sort of do that, it's not quite the same.
I tend to be a bit picky with the way I do things on a computer. As in, once I find a way I'm used to and that works, I prefer to stick with it.
Does anyone know of a similar program that can do the same thing as DirectCD did?
You can buy DirectCD from Roxio, though I wouldn't recommend it (Roxio EasyCD Creator suite is cr@p, IMHO).
You can purchase Nero from ahead (http://www.nero.com), and use their "InCD" program.
Sorry, don't know any free-as-in-beer ones for you.
Okay, thanks.
I normally run my monitor at a resolution of 1360x768 . Recently, I downloaded a demo of a game that perhaps I should leave nameless. It, however uses the Quake 3 engine (but isn't quake). I ran that at (I believe) 1600x1200.
Problem is, when the game exited today, my display 'bounced' from wide screen to the traditional but still at 1360x768!
My vid card is an Ati.
I tried a re-boot but to no avail. I used the ATI control panel to fix it but as soon as the screen saver comes on, it goes back to trying to display 1360x768 as standard rather then wide screen. It's as though the entry for 1360x768 has been corrupted!
Has anyone else ever seen this before?
OK, is a USB port "splittable"? For example in a home entertainment system, an audio (or video) input or output jack is splittable. You simply need a Y-connection with one male and two female connectors. Likewise a power outlet is splittable. You use a cube tap or an extension cord with three female connectors at the end. Or a power strip with multiple outlets.
But the computer needs to know what it is talking to, and where. That is why the old parallel and serial ports had to be numbered. But I guess I'm wondering if that can be handled by hardwired instructions in the splitter itself. The way the devices handle it under the plug and play protocols.
The reason I'm asking is that my computer has three USB ports, but I have four USB devices. Two of them are flash drives, so I have just been swapping them out as needed. On the rare occasions I'm transferring files between them, I unplug my printer and use that port. But what do I do when I get another device that I can't (or at least really don't want to) swap out?
Yes, just get a USB hub. About $15-20.
Lately, what appears to be Flash ads on web pages are making my Browser (Firefox 2.0.0.14) lock up. What's interesting is, I don't have trouble with youtube videos, which use Flash.
Has anyone else seen this problem?
I think that's what's been happening to me lately, too. One site I recently discovered uses them sometimes and I get occasional lockups there. No problem playing Youtube vids with the same browser. I have no idea what to do about it.
Well, Firefox 3 is coming out on Tuesday, so...
My guess is that it's a cookies issue with the businesses that use the ads. I don't think Youtube tries to install cookies every time you watch a video on it.
sometimes my fonts dont work, I am on a windows xp
emachine t2682 any suggestions?
happy July 4th every nitpicker!
Is there any way to delete the list of options that comes up when you start typing a name in a username slot?
I sometimes type up a fancy version of my name (KAM KAMbot, KAMthing, etc.) & unfortunately every one of them comes up as soon as I start typing.
I've tried clearing the cache, but that doesn't work & unfortunately, not using them doesn't make them go away after a few days.
I just scroll down to the option(s) I don't want any more and hit the Delete key. Next time I start to type "Ca" in the Username box, the deleted options don't reappear.
That's in IE, anyway.
If you're using IE7, you can clear the form box by going to internet options and clicking the delete browser history. That will bring up the option to delete history, form data, cookies, temp internet files, and passwords.
Click delete form data.
Thanks!
I use Firefox, but I poked around & found the saved form data under Privacy under Preferences.
I was going to say that another option would be to wipe your hard drive. 
Recently I had to do a wipe and re-install of my main hard drive. I'm running Windows98se.
When I go to eject my Zip disc, I get the message 'An EJECT request was received for a drive that is in use. Continue with eject?" no matter how long it's been since I actually used the drive.
Before the wipe I had somehow defeated this. Anyone got an idea of what it might have been? I think it might have been by editing a line in the registry, but I'm not certain and I don't want to be poking around in there for fun.
I ran a defrag analysis in Windows XP. One of the files it listed was only 1 KB yet it said it had 522 fragments. How is that even possible? It definitely said 1 Kilobyte and not Megabyte. I'm using the NTFS file system.
I recently upgraded my Firefox browser. Now when I click on the link in my bookmarks for the NitCentral board, I get a blank page with a dialogue banner saying that the page tried to re-direct me but Firefox won't allow it. (It does give me a button to tell Firefox to allow it this one time.) While I appreciate this feature, I'm hoping that there is somewhere that I can go and register the permission to make it permanent for sites I trust, like NitCentral.
I did try changing the URL in the bookmark to the re-directed address, but NitCentral's server sent back a page telling me I don't have permission to view the page, so I assume that there is some sort of "handshaking" going on during the re-direct, that tells the server it's all right to serve me the page.
Has anyone else run into this? And were you able to solve it?
Haven't seen this. What's the URL you're using?
The url that I have used in my bookmark is http://www.nitcentral.com/discus/
The url it redirects to is http://nitcentral.philfarrand.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi
Like I said I appreciate that Firefox 4.0 stops unauthorized redirects. They can be as lethal as unauthorized pop-ups. I just wish I could find where to register authorized re-directs.
You should use the second as your bookmark. Phil pretty much retired nitcentral.com after the spambot attacks a few years back.
I tried changing the bookmark before posting the question and was denied access, so I changed it back so I could get onto the board to post the question. I just changed it again, and now it opens the board. Maybe I mis-typed something the first time.
Thanks, Scott.
Not really a "dumb question", but I couldn't really find a good place to put it.
It's been quite a year for tech retirements.