h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Best April Fool geekiness I've seen all day --
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/1/715269/-Daily-Kos:-Ready-for-the-Future,-Ready-for-the-Enterprise

The comments are great.

Take a look at this: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5514

Oh, that is scary! We all know that Belgians actually talk like that.

There is a newly registered researcher who's in need of help to uninstall something called Babylon - if any of you über s would have the time to give advice I think said researcher would be very greatful:

<./>F103378?thread=6455201</.>

Grrrrrr. And . And .

Got a brand spanking new PC and a wonderful 22" widescreen monitor. But did I check which type of keyboard the new PC uses? And do I have a USB keyboard??

Hrmpf.

Good thing shops open tomorrow...

Tell me about it. My most recent computer problem has been posted in my journal for prosperities sake And so you can all laugh at me when the ffault is smoething exceedingly stupid.

mini

I'm looking for some advice. I am getting close to getting a new PC (really new, not hand-me-down-new-to-me). I have issues about being able to get online, as previously mentioned. Thing is, I would like to be able to get online using broadband, especially if I need to download something (usually security and Windoze updates). Now for my question:

How much does a mobile broadband dongle cost per month, and would it be possible to get one where I wouldn't have to get a contract? I live in California, which seems to have a few options, but the terms are confusing. What do the terms, 5 Mb, or even 5G etc, mean in terms of hours online just surfing???

I'm a fairly casual user, but online for HOURS due to using dial-up which makes some pages take as much as 4 minutes to load! Not to mention the times when it takes so long or so much processing that everything crashes.

Any help would be appreciated!

SC

SC, I pay $60/month for a 3G netcard for my laptop. It has a 5Gb/month limit. I get it from Ma Bell. I have found that the big providers are all about the same price.

No use to SC but

Three in the UK are currently offering 15GB/Month for 15 Quid



Thats the first time I've ever seen tech offerings cheaper in the UK than the US.

Most of the time we get charged the same in UK pounds as you do in $$

Thanks, guys!

Marv, how much time (in hours) online does that 5G get you? Or, put another way, how much time do you spend online, on average? (I know your weekends are used for paintball!)

I've seen 100Mb (Verizon?) for about $40/month, but I think it's strictly local access and also includes certain amounts of music downloads and video usage.

My situation is that I can't use the dial-up when the roomie is home; it's her house and her rules. I've already asked he to use her WiFi, and she's refused, kind of a attitude, I think. But I'm living here on her kindness so I can't *complain*.

That leaves me time to job hunt (you never know, I might be able to find something I can do!), check mail,follow my friend's blogs and of course visit here during the day, and after she goes to bed. Sooooo, I'm up until very late on days I have to run errands or go to the doctor. You can see why that loading time is driving me NUTS!

SC, I have that for emergencies and for convenience. I don't use it consistently. It's all about how much data you generally transfer. If you are watching a lot of video or downloading large files it won't last long. If you are web browsing it will last a very long time.

That's what I was looking for! Couldn't get a straight answer out of the Verizon rep I talked to. I mainly need it to download program updates -- this is something I *rarely* do, but when I do, I usually time out on dial-up. Thanks!

My laptop (Dell running Vista Ultimate) has 4 USB sockets but I can only use two of them. Looking under device manager, I see a whole passel (more than two) of USB ports, all apparently working properly. What's missing? How do I enable the other sockets?

When in doubt you can always uninstall and reinstall those devices in the device mangler. Be sure you have your dell driver disc handy.

Is each of the drivers listed by the device manager mapped to a specific USB socket? I mean, I have 4 sockets, only 1 & 2 of which respond to a USB plug. When I go about disabling one or more drivers, how do I know which socket I'm trying to disable/enable?

Easy but urgent question:

Landlady's computer seems to have trashed Windows.She never made a recovery disc. Can I use ANY old recovery disc, even for a different version of Vista to boot the sucker up? I have all the proper registration keys written down for her copy of Vista, and she brought me that notebook. But she never did make a recovery disc (like I told her to!)

When she brought the machine over last night she had somehow got herself into the CMOS setup screen and it was asking if I wanted to save and exit. Jeez! I didn't know whether she had changed anything so I said no and got out. Puter then did nothing.

Turned it off at switch, waited, turned it back on. It wouldn't advance beyond the splash screen so I had to go into CMOS, where, without changing anything, I saved and exited.

It took about thirty minutes, but I eventually got the windows login screen. Entered the password, which was accepted, and then... nada. Finally got an arrow cursor on a black screen.

Turned it off, turned it on again, and after half an hour I noticed that the optical drive light was flashing like the machine was trying to read it. Gave up.

This morning I turned it on just to see what it would do. It advanced past the splash screen to a sort of DOS cursor and stayed there.

So. No recovery disc. Is she screwed?


The good news is I just did a data backup for her, so if this is a hard drive crash she'll be able to recover her stuff.

OK, windows is hosed. Big time.
Make a backup of all the bytes on the disk (including the hidden directories). You can do this with a bootable CD-ROM from Clonezilla or a Bart PE CD-ROM (Google is your friend).

You can create a recovery CD-ROM on any other PC that runs the same version of windows, so that does not have to be a problem.

Otherwise if the original is windows XP you can try to do an upgrade to windows 7 to retain the data that is not that easy to backup (stored passwords in the browser, settings, etc.).

There are other tricks but they require a a good working knowledge of windows.

Doh!
Sorry!
My eyes skipped over the 'Vista' bit. disregard the windows XP bit except that you can also upgrade vista to windows 7.

Hah. She's got Vista Home Premium on her laptop and I've got Vista Ultimate Wahoo (or whatever) on mine, so I can't use my disc. I'll check out the online recovery options -- thanks for the tip.

Fail. I found and downloaded a recovery iso for Vista, burned it to a CD and tried to boot the sick laptop, after checking the BIOS to make sure it was set to factory configuration, but still couldn't get past the dos cursor. The laptop goes to the emergency room tomorrow, for the professional geeks to slap around.