"...or find some sympathetic geek who'll give them to ya."

Hurts, check your e-mail.

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Screw the DS. Install anyway.

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Oh honey, I did. mthrfckr doesn't work is the problem.

doggo, I'm still futzing with that. Upon first try my computer didn't want to save that file to disk. We'll see.

my gf's roomie has a 1 year old sony vaio laptop with xp installed. she asked me to look at it today because see said it "died on her today." I hit the power button and each time all the power, HD, etc. lights would blink solid for a sec or two then nothing. Black screen. period.
I removed her battery and tryed several more times and after about five times, I got a black screen that read something to the effect of "operating system not installed". then it stopped at that screen. I then hit the power button again another 5 times or so and now it returned to it's previous behavior. all the power, HD, etc. lights would blink solid for a sec or two then nothing. Black screen. period.

I assume it's a power supply issue. anybody got other ideas/insight/solutions?
Thanx.

Hard drive is dieing?

Is it still warrantied?

Stop fiddling with it for awhile, unplug everything and remove the battery, then after 30 minutes reconnect power and try to start it up again.

Try alternate power outlet as well if you get same results. Check Sony Viao website.

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Sony Vaio...XP

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Thar's your problem .

Seriously though, my bro's laptop had this issue and now my faithful one has as well. Normally it's the power socket on the laptop itself. Those things take a fair bit of abuse - wiggling cables etc. - and eventually the solder on just snaps and breaks the connections. Pretty common problem, but until they introduce a new standard...

Sometimes you can wriggle it right, sometimes it dies.

Urg - my lappie now has the NIC socket version of this problem - sometimes it works, sometimes not. Since it's still a while before I can get a new one, I'm reduced to using wireless only for a while...

Can't get a PCMCIA card, Bravus? Although they are on a sorta too expensive-why bother level.

thx martin, lithos, and elecktrik dragon. all of your comments have been passed on to her. I still think it's a power supply issue though...

I hate this fucking Microsoft kludge.

I'm trying to write a dozen large, 7-8 MB TIFF photos to a writable CD. However, my CD-writer doesn't recognise a blank CD anymore- not since I downloaded Service Pack 2 a few months back. (Yes, I'm on Windows XP Pro. I unloaded SP2 with ten minutes of installation- it fucked everything up so badly.)

I called a geek-friend, and he suggested a free writer-download as a probable suitable workaround to the Windows error in my computer. He recommended Nero. Went to their site, got a bunch of downloads. He was right. Their free one, Photoshow Express, works fine, lets me write JPEGs fine, but it refuses to handle (or even see) TIFFs. Their free 30-day demo version might, but it isn't free- it wants a password.

So: Does anyone know of a free, 30-day trial (hell, even 3-day trial) CD-burning program that (1) won't try to envirus my computer, and (b) that will handle 9 MB, 2800-pixel wide photographs?

And, no, I don't have a USB drive (though I can certainly see their utility), nor do I enjoy easy access to another computer with a working CD-burner.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated, and feel free to state the obvious. Thank you for not laughing at me.

lithos - I have a PCMCIA wireless card. Trouble is, neither the classroom where I teach or my office has wireless, so I have to go down to the cafeteria to a hotspot to transfer anything, or take the lappie home. Come on you big research grant with provision for 3 PowerBooks...

MOM - I've been using a freeware one called 'DeepBurner' on XP with great success. Google for it - it's genuine freeware, no spyware and seems to work pretty well. You have to pay for the version that will make direct CD/DVD copies, but they're kind enough to tell you about a workaround right in the help files. I <3 open source!

Got a new Bloomberg for the office. Very sexy beast: two 17-inch flat screens on a chrome pedestal; ivory and chrome keyboard etc etc. (I liked the old look myself but this new retro chrome look is interesting as well.)
Skipped the $500 Bloomberg install to do it myself and everything was going great until I tired to connect to Bloomberg central. Spent 20 mins on the phone with the help desk, twigging the network settings and generally trying everything we could think of, when my non-tech-savvy co-worker noticed something: "Shouldn't it be plugged into one of those phone plug kind of things?"
"Ummm. Ya. Let's try that," I said.
"I think I've come up with a solution myself," I told the helpdesk. "I'll get back to you if it doesn't work."
Hung up the phone. Plugged in the RJ45 connector laying on the floor next to the machine. Hung head in shame.

Just as long as you didn't break the cup holder off, you're doing fine!

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Originally posted by Bravus:
Come on you big research grant with provision for 3 PowerBooks...

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Damned academics!

Don't squander it on powerbooks. Aren't you meant to be researching a way to turn lead into gold?

As for freeware burning programs, try Burn4Free. Hasn't failed me yet.

Thank you very much, gents. Deepburner loaded very quickly and worked a charm, once I figured out its very counterintuitive commands.

heart

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Originally posted by Bravus:
I <3 open source!

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I finally figured out what "<3" means.

Took me a while.

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Originally posted by Fashionpolice:
I finally figured out what "<3" means.

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hehe - the next stage of your geekish initiation is when you understand it when I say 'I less-than-three open source'!

From an article linked in the "New Apple Minis" thread:

"If you look at how people actually work, they often live within a few set applications: a word processor, a browser, a few utilities and sometimes one or two vertical applications."

I'm convinced these people don't speak English. What's a considered a utility, and what then would be a vertical application?