It's no wonder so many people have PC problems

[Capmaster]

I had to make a post about this. It's been bothering me for a couple of days now. I read several PC magazines voraciously and the latest issue of PC World (5/2004) has an article called "PC Problems? Fix 'em yourself". I always read articles like these to get little tidbits for future use.

This article got my attention. I won't say any more. See what you think ....any reactions to the advice given. I'm scanning in some select pieces of "advice" and "help":

[VCDHunter]

I don't get the "help" given here, it says minor next to "System won't boot" - doesn't seem minor to me seems like a serious problem

[Capmaster]

I don't get the "help" given here, it says minor next to "System won't boot" - doesn't seem minor to me seems like a serious problem

I forgot to add that the answers are given in three "scenarios" - minor, moderate and serious, and the answer offers possible causes. The three I happened to notice were all "minor" scenarios.

[northcat_8]

Cap -

Was the name of the Magazine "Trouble shooting PC's for the retarded"?

HOLY COW these guys aren't even close to anything rational.

Windows won't start of crashes frequently = minor
~no easy process to restore windows to a saved point if you can't boot to windows.

System won't boot or see hard drive = minor??
"hard drive couldn't answer the call in the chill of morning?????
~WTF? Is Nanook using his PC to keep track of the morgage payments on his igloo???? If my house is cold enough that my HD's won't work, you can damn well bet booting my PC is not a high priority that morning.


Fragemented disc rarely has an impact on performance?
~not written by someone dealing with video I see. Take a 60 GB drive, frag it to 15% and then capture a 32 GB file and see how performance is.


It's shameful that these folks are "Helping" people and the ones they are helping are the ones that don't know any better.

[Capmaster]

Cap -

Was the name of the Magazine "Trouble shooting PC's for the retarded"?

HOLY COW these guys aren't even close to anything rational.

Windows won't start of crashes frequently = minor
~no easy process to restore windows to a saved point if you can't boot to windows.

System won't boot or see hard drive = minor??
"hard drive couldn't answer the call in the chill of morning?????
~WTF? Is Nanook using his PC to keep track of the morgage payments on his igloo???? If my house is cold enough that my HD's won't work, you can damn well bet booting my PC is not a high priority that morning.


Fragemented disc rarely has an impact on performance?
~not written by someone dealing with video I see. Take a 60 GB drive, frag it to 15% and then capture a 32 GB file and see how performance is.


It's shameful that these folks are "Helping" people and the ones they are helping are the ones that don't know any better.

That's why I posted this here. Over the last two days I have reread the article and then put it down. Then read it again, not quite sure I had read it correctly.

Then I started getting an irresistable urge to pull out my copy of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and watch it over and over so I might understand the advice given in the article.

Thank you northcat I'm not the only one. I was beginning to wonder if my exposure to this board was doing irreversible damage to my brain cells somehow

[iooi]

System won't boot or see hard drive = minor??
.

Of course its a minor problem....The bigger problem is the hole in the window letting all the cold air in...

[Capmaster]

System won't boot or see hard drive = minor??
.

Of course its a minor problem....The bigger problem is the hole in the window letting all the cold air in...

I hate it when it gets sub-zero in the house when I'm trying to edit video

[Jayhawk]

Fragemented disc rarely has an impact on performance?

I worked on a college kid's computer over the weekend and in addition to 5 viruses / worms and 4,000 infected files he had 11gig of restore files. Seems that his system restore process had been making checkpoints since mid-2001. He didn't know what "defrag" meant. Needless to say after deleting 20,000 restore points the defrag made more than a "minor" difference.

[indolikaa]

I worked on a college kid's computer over the weekend and in addition to 5 viruses / worms and 4,000 infected files he had 11gig of restore files. Seems that his system restore process had been making checkpoints since mid-2001. He didn't know what "defrag" meant. Needless to say after deleting 20,000 restore points the defrag made more than a "minor" difference.

He must have been a Mizzou student...


The worst ones for me were the PhD's who think they know everything about everything but could never understand why their TL/P simulations were crashing when the file reached 4 GB in size. Hmmm, I wonder if WinME might have something to do with it, Doctor?

And then I read the hash in 'modern' PC magazines, and it all makes perfect sense.

[Conquest10]

I don't know why but this made me think about what this mac user told me the other day. He said he would never use a pc because then he couldn't use his ipod without an administrator password.

[VCDHunter]

Over the last two days I have reread the article and then put it down. Then read it again, not quite sure I had read it correctly.

Class.

[indolikaa]

I don't know why but this made me think about what this mac user told me the other day. He said he would never use a pc because then he couldn't use his ipod without an administrator password.

Must...breathe...again...laughing...bad...oxygen.. .good...

[VCDHunter]

"hard drive couldn't answer the call in the chill of morning?????
~WTF? Is Nanook using his PC to keep track of the morgage payments on his igloo???? If my house is cold enough that my HD's won't work, you can damn well bet booting my PC is not a high priority that morning.

No shit

My Seagate wont operate below -40 C - at that temp screw my HD, I'm worried I wont boot up

[northcat_8]

"hard drive couldn't answer the call in the chill of morning?????
~WTF? Is Nanook using his PC to keep track of the morgage payments on his igloo???? If my house is cold enough that my HD's won't work, you can damn well bet booting my PC is not a high priority that morning.

No shit

My Seagate wont operate below -40 C - at that temp screw my HD, I'm worried I wont boot up

Told you to go with the Maxtors.....my 3 Maxtors run like champs at 0 degrees Kelvin. Of course my XP boot up screen reads "TURN ON SOME HEAT DUMBASS" but that's a different issue.

[indolikaa]

Hey dumbass, all molecular activity ceases at 0°K, so how's your computer going to function?!

.indolikaa.
Thermodynamically Stable

[northcat_8]

That's why I posted this here. Over the last two days I have reread the article and then put it down. Then read it again, not quite sure I had read it correctly.

I think a few of us should find their site and schedule an away game on their own forum....get your flame throwers lit boys...we have an away game tonight.....

[northcat_8]

Hey dumbass, all molecular activity ceases at 0°K, so how's your computer going to function?!

.indolikaa.
Thermodynamically Stable

My hard drives are not molecular...they are magnetic :P and work just fine at absolute zero. I dont' know why you can't get yours to work in those temps.

So you are saying nothing functions at ABSOLUTE ZERO??? Really?

[Jayhawk]

He must have been a Mizzou student

I sorry to report he was a KU student (at least he was smart enough to bring it to me).

Of course in addition to all the other problems he had at leat two versions of Morpheous, Kazaa, AND Napster on his machine. No firewall, no virus program. Some people pretty much deserve what they get.

[flaninacupboard]

hmm, i was just thinking "but defragging doesn't make any difference" and looked out of curiosity - my boot drive is 71% fragmented!

that's not good news!

[northcat_8]

hmm, i was just thinking "but defragging doesn't make any difference" and looked out of curiosity - my boot drive is 71% fragmented!

that's not good news!

yea, well according to PC News you won't see any performance increase by defragging it

[flaninacupboard]

they're right, i haven't.

Maybe because after about an hour it finished up, and is still 60% fragmented, saying it can't move a bunch of files......
I hate windows sometimes.

[Jayhawk]

Just curious flaninacupboard but is the drive that will not defrag the 20gig or your 60gig. The only two reasons I can think of why Windows would not move a file is either it is marked as unmoveable (the swap file) or defrag does not not have enough contiguous work space (or memory) to move the file(s). If it's a workspace issue and it's your drive with the swap file you could probably get around it by temporarily setting to no swap file or pointing the swap file to the other drive. Could also move one or more files to the other drive, back them up to DVD / CDR, delete them and restore them later. etc.

Just soem suggestions. You may have tried them already.

[Capmaster]

In Norton Speed Disk I have to manually put the name "pagefile.sys" under "Files to put first" for it to work right. Maybe your defrag app is similar.

[flaninacupboard]

thanks for the tips, but after the first one didn't seem to work first thing i did was turn off virtual memory. then i cleared some space (yes it's my 20gig, my 60gig died and i'm still awaiting a replacement. managed to clear 6gigs though, i'm sure that's enough!) and tried again. it managed to do some good, but was still 50 something % fragged. i'm just having to run defrag over and over to slowly bring it down.

Just checked, now down to 11%.
Once i've got my 60gb back i think i'll do a format and clean install anyway.

[Capmaster]

thanks for the tips, but after the first one didn't seem to work first thing i did was turn off virtual memory. then i cleared some space (yes it's my 20gig, my 60gig died and i'm still awaiting a replacement. managed to clear 6gigs though, i'm sure that's enough!) and tried again. it managed to do some good, but was still 50 something % fragged. i'm just having to run defrag over and over to slowly bring it down.

Just checked, now down to 11%.
Once i've got my 60gb back i think i'll do a format and clean install anyway.

If you run a defragmenter right after the clean install it'll set aside the swapfile space. Just make sure you remember to set the minimum and maximum swapfile size to the same setting. That way Windows won't be constantly adjusting it and fragmenting the hell out of your HD

[glockjs]

the only thing i can say to the original post is.....WOW im still at a loss for words, ill get back to you on this one...WOW