you're all so great. i'll let him know. if things pan out well, he and i may actually get to hang out one of these nights!

quote:

Someone cryptically muttered to me the other day 'you don't need Javascript for mouseovers these days', then didn't elucidate further.

True, in some cases. But this isn't just a rollover, it's a rollover and a click action. Also, while you can do some good rollover effects for text with css, it is harder to do a pure css rollover with images. The javascript way is the most simple for images, and all current browsers support it anyway.

It's official, my computer has cancer.
Now, if one of you good souls knew a tool I could use to fix my hard disk more efficiently than Windows' Scandisk, I'd be interested.

The problem is not a virus.
My computer crashed, and my disk got damaged.
I can still use it, but I get reading errors whenever I try to launch anything that was installed there.

Arkan.

I had the same trouble. My computer would freeze up after 20 sec. on Restart or Cold Boot.

I backed up everything I could on DVD and low-level formatted the bastard. Everything ticks along now.

Discussing this, I realized something unspeakably horrid :

-It still worked fine until I used the Windows scandisk.-

Fuck!

quote:

When in doubt, nuke it out.

-lithos.

quote:

Originally posted by ArkanGL:
My computer crashed, and my disk got damaged.
I can still use it, but I get reading errors whenever I try to launch anything that was installed there.

Sounds like a hard drive that is in the process of dieing. If you try to read a specific block, computer crashes.

I could be wrong. Things like that are hard to prognose. I would, however, recogment to backup data and move the operating system to a different drive (if possible).

I use an unreliable harddrive for years now. I know that the computer will crash if I fill it to over 80% but so far it is till fine to store temporar data like images and stuff on it.

Should I bother buying a new battery for my laptop?

The battery on my laptop computer is shot. It simply won't recharge. However when it was new, it only had enough power for about an hour, and reviews of the battery have given it 90 minutes top.

So I'm trying to decide if I should invest $150-200 for a new battery for a 3-year old laptop so that I can do short guided web-cam tours of my garden again, or if I should just continue staying 'wired'.

Opinions? Advice?

@FP

most Laptops have a Battery renewing ~something~ option in there bios. Look for that option first and try it.

It basicly deischarges the batterie and recharges it using impulses ... this can help to regain lost capacity.

It's worth trying as it might help, and the battery is otherwise dead anyway.

It's amazing hard drives work in the first place. I try not to think about it.

FP... I've got the same deal. Is the cheapest battery you can find really that expensive?

Mine's only $90 and even then I keep putting off getting one. I mean, I keep spending the $90 on something else, so I must not need the damned thing away from a wall outlet too much.

Once a laptop battery gets below about 40% of it's ability to hold a charge when new, it's either shot or well on its way to shot. Cycling it or conditioning it won't do much good.

The cheapest one I have found is 99€ + shipping (somewhere between 10-20€). So if I'm lucky I could get it down to about $132 USD.

However I also have to think about which seller will be most practical if there is a problem with the battery. I'm not really sure if the 2-year European warranty applies to rechargable batteries.

That reminds me, time to have another crack at getting my laptop to actually accept a power cable.

Wish me luck...

quote:

It's amazing hard drives work in the first place. I try not to think about it.

You're telling me. I used to work on PDP-11s. The hard drive for one of those things was a massive wavy cylinder of metal about 15" in diameter and 8" deep that took a couple of minutes to spin down before it could be unlocked and manually lifted from the cabinet with a special lifting tool and 2 hands. Now they cram orders of magnitude more data onto something I can fit into the palm of my hand.

I'm afraid that if I think too much about the technology involved with present day hard drives, there will be some sort of release of the magic that is really making them work and available for what... 30 cents a gig or less.

I don't mess with magic.

Dragon reads postings & gives his computer advice...

Hard Drives - You can always use more space. Believe me. You may not think you even *need* 4TB's of space, but one day we'll all wonder how anyone ever got by with so little storage... So, if the drive your OS is installed on is messing up, this is a no brainer. Get and install a new (and most likely higher capacity) drive. Transfer as much as you can from the old drive, then reformat it and use it as extra storage space until it finally dies. The headaches involved in using a busted drive as your boot partition far outweigh buying and installing a new drive. Unless of course you are using a laptop, in which case you are SOL for any option...

Laptop Batteries - Total waste of money. Very high priced, and they usually don't perform anywhere close to the specs advertised. They quickly lose their full capability unless you are some kind of Zen power management monk. In other words, anyone who actually uses their laptop for computing will quickly destroy the battery beyond usefulness within a few months. Possibly you could look into mil-spec performace batteries but then you will pay out the yinyang.

Honestly, I doubt laptop batteries will be useful until we have fuel cell types. The new tech which promises to create electricity by breaking down alcohols, which are not so much rechargeable as refillable....

FP - a wireless webcam and wifi PC Card would probably be a better long term investment than a new battery. Consider it a roving baby monitor for future times...

quote:

Hard Drives - You can always use more space. Believe me. You may not think you even *need* 4TB's of space, but one day we'll all wonder how anyone ever got by with so little storage... So, if the drive your OS is installed on is messing up, this is a no brainer. Get and install a new (and most likely higher capacity) drive. Transfer as much as you can from the old drive, then reformat it and use it as extra storage space until it finally dies. The headaches involved in using a busted drive as your boot partition far outweigh buying and installing a new drive. Unless of course you are using a laptop, in which case you are SOL for any option...

Just did this to my main machine 2 days ago, in fact.

And a hipflask of pure ethanol, some for the lappie, some for me...

Finally got my freakin' laptop mobo separated from its case last night.

That things got more screws than the casting credits to a season of Prisoner.

And don't forget, if you're running OSX, you ought to be able to clone from the computer to any external hard drive OR use firewire target mode to clone from from any Mac to any other Mac. Wheee.

(Get and install psync; format the external; /usr/local/bin/psync / /Volumes/NewDrive)

EDIT: Ummmm, that assumes the old drive is still functional enough to clone and stuff, naturally...

When I came back home, yesterday evening, my computer was working again.
I have no explaination.
Nekomancer-the-Cyber-Cat probably fixed it...

The hard disk has absolutely no problem.

Windows XP must have had a nasty hiccup.

Now I'd better backup everything, just in case...