i was sitting on my computer, and all of a sudden, miley cyrus started playing through the speakers. for no reason. i had no music programs open, no ads, no nothing. the song ended, and another song came on. then another! i heard about 5 songs and i still couldnt figure out where it was coming from. then, my aim kicked me off, and when i signed back on, the music stopped. could this have been caused by aim? it was the weirdest thing, im scanning my computer for viruses right now, but i have no idea what this could have been.

i think its related to aim, because it happened to my friend and my brother as well. just wondering what this is

So yeah, its aim. Just keep your window closed.

Actually through a bit of searching i think i may have found the solution... go to View>Modules>Radio... this seems to be what it is... theres a new AOL Radio function on there for some weird reason... you can stop it there

So I've had my new computer for about two weeks now, and I love it. My only problem is that my hard drive space keeps going down, and I'm not even installing anything! I started off with 420 GB free of a 455 GB hard drive. I installed Crysis, BioShock, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which dropped me down to about 400 GB free.

A week later, I am now at 363 GB free.

What the fuck?

Eh? Take a stroll around your file system, noting what takes the space? Look into the recycle bin and your internet browser options - if you want you can set the maximum sizes of them.

Unless you're downloading anything that's a pretty big drop though.

I'll check my browser settings and such, but this is just so weird. The only things I download are patches and such for my games (no mods, music, or anything...my computer was wayyyy too expensive for me to risk it on random downloads), and after I install them I delete them. I have no idea what's going on, and when I booted it up a few minutes ago it had dropped from 363 GB to 361 GB.

Maybe it's all of these live updates or whatever that my computer keeps installing from Norton and Microsoft...but I wouldn't image them to be 30 GB total!

It's so weird...

Can anyone here recommend me a decent cooling pad? I have an aurora m700 which is a desktop replacement and quite a large machine by notebook standards. It gets amazingly hot after playing games and I am looking for something to help chill it out.

I have no idea what to look for in cooling pads and do not really understand a lot of them, especially sense the fans on the pads I am seeing do not always match the ones on the bottom of my notebook.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Okay, so I put in a new hard into my PC yesterday, replacing my secondary one (one which I only had a few games installed), but now, for some reasons, my fonts keep messing up: the window title/tab texts appear in italics, as do certain site texts appear (like the front page of MA), and now even bold has been thrown into the mix. Does anyone have any tip what could be the problem?

Zalman NC2000 will do the trick.

Mine's a fairly simple problem.

Sent my laptop into HP for a repair. Got it back, reinstalled OS, programs, settings and everything. (Took forever)

Now when I seem to click on a link to stream a .mpg or .wmv video in a browser such as firefox, maxthon, or IE, it will not open up in any player to stream. I've tried opening it on many different sites, so I know it's not a server thing either.

So what does happen when you click a link to stream? Do you have the proper codecs to watch the videos?

So it just doesn't open the media player or doesn't play in the media player?

Alright, this one's a royal bitch. Each time I connect to my local network (as in, turn on my router) to surf the internet it gets difficult to open files on my computer. So what I do is, open the application first, and drag and drop the file into the application. If I forget and accidentally double click a file, it takes upto a minute where the comp freezes, and then it opens normally. All files. The windows menu acts normally. Shortcuts to applications are normal as well.

ONLY when i turn on my network connection. How fucking weird is this? It's not a major problem, but each time I'm forgetful and double click a file, it fucking hangs. I IZ ANNOYED. :mad::mad:

Please help, dudes. Please.

help?

I have no real help for that, sorry. A quick glance at google didn't give me anything either. I've noticed that service pack 3 for Windows XP fixed some random bugs (Windows stopping to resolve DNS queries being one of them) so you may want to try some such updates.

Also, in Folder Options, you don't automatically search for network folders and printers, do you?

Thanks for responding. I did have that option checked, dunno how that happened. Anyway, it hasn't fixed the problem. I updated my computer as well, and it hasn't solved it. Now I plan to delete the network connection and create a new one with the old specs. Let's see if that will fix it.

If you don't see me posting for the next few weeks you'll know I fucked it up. :lol:

I get a IRQL not less or equal blue screen error (stop 0x0000000A) on Windows XP and have no idea what caused it.

I also get a similar blue screen error when I try to play a film that is burned on to a DVD, although I don't think it is the same error, so it's possibly the DVD drivers.
I'll post if you need to know the error because I don't want to crash my PC unless i have to.

There is memtest86 that is suppose to check for errors but it's not free. I'd appreciate any help to solve it, it's only happened twice when not inserting a DVD so far.

I haven't been on my PC for days so I can't remember if I shut it down or if there was a power outage or something but since I have tried to get back on it,it won't go pass the Windows XP screen. It just sits there and loads and loads in the Windows screen. What can I do to get it back on the to my desktop?

Try running in Safe Mode. Hold the F8 key when you turn on the computer and select Safe Mode from there.

When I turned on my computer, it prompted me to a screen that says 'we're sorry for the inconvenience but Windows, this might be due to a recent hardware or software installed...'etc
And then it gives me a choice to choose to restart Windows normally or with last known settings which when I choose it just loads endlessly with the XP screen with blue load bars(if the color indicates anything as I done know or remember). So right now, I have chosen safe mode and it goes to the black screen with safe mode labeled on the bottom corners and a cursor to move around. After just sitting like that for five or ten minutes,a little windows screen says it is loading windows and then disappears with the hourglass and the cursor. So it looks like it is trying to load something. Problem is, its been like that for twenty minutes now.
The last time I remember leaving the desktop, I remember it kept asking me if I was ready to restart the computer with newest updates. So I don't know if that is a telltale sign or if its from a Trojan or a power outage etc. I hope it isn't fried because I have slot of stuff on there.
If anyone can give me any possible reasons or help on what could be wrong, Id appreciate it greatly.

MS Dart (no I am serious) is the only thing that can help you properly.
Link to MS
Create a CD with this program and then use it on your broken PC. Try to find out what the problem is... run some tests or use a system recovery point to test if an 'older' system works properly.

Not a problem, but possibly a dumb question... basically just wondering, I have 4 USB ports on my laptop - do any of them differ in speed or anything (if so how would I check)? Guess I just wonder since I usually have two externals plugged in at all times, would probably be better to have them connected to the better outputs, if that's even the case.

And I need a new mouse that's not stupid. I've got one taking up two ports, for some reason I have to use both the sensor and the direct wire both plugged in too get the damn thing working (used to be fine with just batteries). /just a rant on worthless hardware.

Also I have a Dell Latitude D820, is there any official way I could maybe upgrade my ram or anything like that? Since it's obviously more complicated than handling a PC, I'm guessing.

*edit* TRY THIS FIRST - Unplug the PC from the wall (While it's already turned off) for 30 seconds or so - It resets some internal hardware not exactly what it was but it has fixed some strange problems like the 'system' process constantly maxing out CPU usage.

I have had a similar problem after a power outage, after dicking around trying to fix it for the better part of 2 hours I figured it's just easier booting via a live disc (I'd recommend Xubuntu or similar lite OS) , mount the internal hard drive and copy all the important documents to an external device, then installing a fresh copy of windows. However I'm starting to think something as simple as going into the windows recovery console and doing a boot config rebuild could of worked.

If you decide the to try the later use these commands in the recovery console first try "Fixboot" with out quotes if that doesn't work "Bootcfg/Rebuild" if neither work then the problem isn't with in the boot sector of the hard disc.

Mines not so much a problem but it's something I can't figure out. How do I open/download something in a Rar Archive format? I'm guessing this shows my lack of computer knowledge, and sorry if this wasn't meant for this thread.

You open the archive with WinRAR, or 7zip (and probably quite a few others).

Go with 7zip it's free, and there are no real advantages with WinRar to warrant paying for it.

7zip is good. I use it as my default unzipper.

I use my hands.

thanks I download 7zip and I got it to work.

Does anybody what plays .mkv?

http://filext.com/file-extension/MKV

Keep this site in the back of your mind for situations like that

Or bookmark it

or use google It's the first site that appears if you search "mkv extension"
And it works for any file type

Like any media format, it's playable in VLC and Media Player Classic.

You might need to install a codec too, especially if you go with MPC.Core AVC is one of the best for this type of files. VLC usually uses ffmpeg, but this can sometimes be a bit slow and allegedly has a bit worse video quality. You can google for how to change it. VLC has been known to handle HD video badly on some computers, though I can't say that I've noticed this myself.



Doesn't work when encrypted.

Ever since I downloaded Firefox 3.0, some videos on sites won't show up for me. I opened the sites in Internet Explorer to make sure, and they worked fine there, so it is clearly a problem with Firefox.

Two example sites that don't work anymore:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/s ... n_strongly

and

http://www.japanesebugfights.com/

Most sites still work, though, like YouTube and Joox.

Also, a note, the aforementioned sites worked fine in the older version of Firefox.

Any help?

It turns out that Firefox 3 and Flash Player 9 don't work out that great together. The only fix available right now seems to be to install the beta version of Flash 10. Here it is

Googling gives that some have had to completely uninstall (yes removing all personal settings and addons) and then reinstall.

Hmm, I installed that new flash player, but the videos still aren't working.

Ouch... that is really odd. Flash again ... like Active X a piece of crap.

That's what I had to give. I suppose you can't do much more than to trawl google and wait for updates then.



At least Flash isn't as plagued with security holes. I don't know about the new contenders either, Java FX seems way too slow and I don't know anything about Silverlight.

I'm having trouble running Opera 9.51. Everytime I open a page, I must click Reload before the page is displayed.

For those who want to check the SSL-certificate in their browser for their correctness, I would like to draw the attention towards this extension for the Fx:

http://codefromthe70s.org/sslblacklist.asp

This is the problem the internet is currently facing:

^
this is just an excerpt.

and therefore it is important to knw whether the key is correct or corrupted and if the connection to a shop is safe or not.

and for familiar with German and are Microsoft software this software written by heise is also of interest:
http://www.heise.de/software/download/c ... hter/55705

for more information: c't, 15/08, 18-19