Posts by dcc

A friend built this computer about six years ago, the motherboard is a Microstar K7-Pro (MS6195 ATX IR3), and I do have the manual. I found the chapter on th BIOS setup, and it looks like I did get to the BIOS setup location, there is a copy of the same menu.
It has the following options:
Standard CMOS Setup
Advanced CMOS Setup
Advanced Chipset Setup
Power Management Setup
PCI/Plug and Play Setup
Load Fail Safe Settings
Load Optimal Settings
Peripheral Setup
Hardware Monitor Setup
Change Supervisor Password
Change User Password
Auto-Detect Hard Disks
Save Settings and Exit
Exit Without Saving

Which one should I choose to get to the LAN or what ever settings? By the way, my keyboard is a cheap plug in.

Hey Catweazle...That was exciting, after using the link you provided I tried to access the BIOS using the <delete> key during startup. I got to a menu with COSMOS at the top and couldn't do any thing but navigate up or down, I pressed Esc with no luck, I eventually tried to reboot resulting in a blankscreen on the monitor and was not able to start up.
I tried turning off the power for ten minutes, and thank god it started. In the words of Tennessee William, "screw it", I'll live with it. Just for kicks and grins, what should I have done to escape, and why didn't the Esc key work?

How do I get to BIOS setup?

Ok Catweazle...It looks like it has to be a onboard connection, can I disable this by going to LAN settings in the properties of IE? If not, I'm going to need a little help with manuvering through the BIOS, new frontiers for me, but I have to learn about that sometime, so I'm game, but only if you have the time.

Hey Catweazle...I just experienced one way to miss an enty myself, when I checked my email I clicked onto the link for caperjacks response, this took me to the thread, but bypassed your response. I just happened to scroll up to check a statement, otherwise I would have missed your entry. I'll check out your suggestion now, and get back to you shortly.

Hey caperjack...went there, did that, and it was already unchecked. Now this begins to get interesting, I clicked the box to enable it, and now there are two icons , if I uncheck the box it goes back to the single icon. By te way, there are two different icons, the normal one that I just duplicated is of two superimposed TVs, the one in the pop up is of a TV with a red X in the screen.

Hi Janine... as much as misery enjoys company, I appreciate the thought, but I really would like to know what the root of this problem is. I'm not networking, so that's not an issue. Catweazle had tried to help in another thread believing that some aspect of my software was addressing a network connection failure, I thought that we had taken care of it, but the deletion that took care of it wouldn't remain deleted. I had indicated that it had been a fix for the moment, but I would wait and see, and I have to assume the he took this as the end of the problem as he didn't respond to the last reply in that thread. Being an electrican who works with programable logic control sytems, I know that a small glitch can eventually become a large problem, so I'm always motivated to find the cause, whether it's benign or not. Having said this, yeah... it's nice to know that someone else has the same problem.

Howdy Catweazle, that looks like the ticket, no cord, no moving parts, and because of my business, I always have lots of batterys for portable test equipment. I took a couple of minutes to go shop Tiger Direct, and found a Logitech L23-6518 optical, cordless, mouse, with scrolling capabilities, for about $20.00 (U.S.). As my dad used to say, " that oughta float the boat!"
Thanks,DCC

I have a reoccuring annoying pop up which is located next to the clock. When it pops up it has an envelope similar to what you would see holding the dialogue in the Sunday funnies, and it reads: Local Area Connection
Network Cable Unpluged
When this occurs a small televison icon with a red X in the screen appears just to the left of the clock. This has been happening whether I've been on line or not. I can't find where it has caused any real problems, it's just annoying as listening to Martha Stewart describe the pastel colors of her previous gated community. I recently went to Firefox as my browser, and thoght that had taken care of the problem...nah, it's just being crafty! Short of an exocisim, does anyone have a suggestion that're printable?

I have a Logitech model: M-CAA42 mouse which works ok most of the time, but I'm getting tired of dealing with the cord, this mouse also lacks any features other than right and left clicks.
I'm thinking about buying a cordless mouse, but I need an education in just what's out there, and what I should look for, and stay away from. I'm also currious about what extra freatures are available that are useful in normal applications, such as scrolling.

Check out this site

http://www.ddjembedded.com/resources/articles/2002/0209k/0209k.htm

What is the max RAM per slot that your computer will recognize?

Thanks Catweazle...that pretty much nails it, and I'm glad I could provide some humor to your day.

Ok, so the problem is the hysteresis of the arm, rather than an electrodynamic glitch with the platters?

Thanks Catweazle, that was too easy.

I had been using Iternet Explorer as my browser, and knew how to delete the cookies and temp. files, now I'm using Firefox, and can't find any where to delete the cookies. Am I missing something here?

At the top of page one in this forum, catweazle has a thread titled "Why put up with the pain. Change browsers!" Changing browsers won't rectify your problem, but it could be a good alternative. To understand the advantages, please read his thread. I recently switched to Firefox and like it a great deal, it's a little slower to start, but is faster than IE once it gets going. For more information about Firefox, check out the link below.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

I was told that if I was on line a lot, that I should defragment my hard drive frequently. I have four questions:

1) How does the HD become fragmented?
2) I'm on line every day for atleast an hour, how often should
I defragment my computer?
3) Is it harmful to defragment the HD often?
4) What is the difference between defragmenting and disk
cleanup?

I realize these are some pretty basic questions, but a guy's got to start some where. Thanks for any help. :mrgreen:

The key word here is inevitalble....you have a problem that's not going away, and catweazle is absolutely right....it could wind up costing you a lot more than the cheap price of a fan.

A suggestion regarding donating the computers...a friend of mine has built and given computers to a local public school, and in order to keep the school system from reallocating the computers, he gives them directly to the teachers.

Ouch...that one could cost you. Next time use either a VOM or DMM to check the out put of the PSU, and a continuity test on the power cord (unpluged). Most PSUs have DC voltages ranging from +3.3v to +20v, and -5v to -20v. If there was a short in the secondary of the psu you could have sent higher voltages to devices that don't respond well to that kind of treatment, and yes it could have killed your CPU and other chips. There is a multipin connector that goes to the motherboard from the SPU, which provides a number of dedicated circuits that go to user specific sites, so it is possibe to have some devices opperate while others will not. There are other dedicated circuits coming out of the SPU that go to such devices as the CD, fans,etc, and a voltage spike could have effected them as well. All of this is dependent on the voltage handling capacity of the diferent devices, and how wide spread the spike was. I have a friend who decided to play electician and put up a new dinning room light, what he didn't realize was that there were two different 110v potentials from two different bus bars producing 220v in this box, when he turned on the lights, they burned very bright, and very breifly. This is prety much what would have happened on a component level in your case. I wish you luck.

Does Mcafee anti virus program include a fire wall, and if it does, is it worth augmenting it with something like Zone Alarm?

After discovering the inherent security problems associated with the Enternet Explorer I switched to Firefox as my default browser, are there any similar problems associated with the Outlook Express. For security purposes, is there any advantage in switching to Thunderbird to receive my email?

found it , and did it...all's back to normal, or as close as I'm ever going to be. Thanks...dcc

That was weird, I clicked the cusor in the upper right hand corner, and the toolbar went horizontal, I then followed your instructions to lower it into place. Thanks charlieB, I wish all my problems were this trivial.

There's one small problem, the icons on the left side next of the start button have disapeared.

That was weird, I clicked the cusor in the upper right hand corner, and the toolbar went horizontal, I then followed your instructions to lower it into place. Thanks charlieB, I wish all my problems were this trivial.

I was in a rush to close this morning and some how inadvertently moved the toolbar from the bottom horizontally, to the right hand side vertically. The start botton is at the top right corner, while the clock and icons are at the bottom right with nothing in between. I can click and drag the left hand edge about half way to the middle of the screen and back, but I can't move the toolbar down. At this point I'm a lost ball in high weeds and could use some help, snikering aside. :o

thanks Janine...I will catalog this information along with the Power Max, if the hard drive passeed both of the Power Max tests, is there any reason to perform htis other test now?

Try looking at mobo combos at tiger direct, they have an Asus K8V SE Deluxe socket 754 ATX motherboard with a AMD Athlon 64 3400+ processor for $299., you should be able to purchase a Kingston 512MB stick for about $50.

Catweazle...I downloaded Power Max, ran the long and short tests and passed both. Thanks for the help...dcc

Thanks...will do.

Hi guys...Thanks for the information and suggestions, I will check these out. It would appear that I'm not the only one who took issue with Pandas lack of customer support.

.

Hi Catweazle...the hard drive is a Maxtor, model D540X-4K.

have you tried running check disk? try this and also try it running the F parametre. before this though run the disk through windows own defragmenter.

if you've tried all this then the only suggestion i can make is to reformat your drive and reinstall windows;)

Hi Janine...I do defragment my computer on a regular basis, as far as running a disc check or the F parametre, I'm a sixth month novice and don't know about these procedures, but thanks to members like you I'm learning. Having said this...how do I perform these procedures? Thanks..dcc

What is "Hijackthis log"?

Hey Catweazle...well, that didn't take long, it's still there, I don't know about you, but I'm thinking exorcism.

My free trial with Panda Antivirus Platinum is twenty two days away from expiring, and I'm not 100% sold on them, there were some less than satisfactory events. I have a grand total of six months experience with my home computer, so I'm going to have to rely on our comunity for some advise. I realize that it may be difficult to get a non-biased answer here, but I'm looking for recommendations about antivirus providers. What kind of prices are normal, and for how long? What about the freebees like AVG? I have about three weeks to make a choice, so any and all help would be very much appreciated. Thanks...dcc

I downloaded the Firefox, and I like it. The only thing that I miss is the Google toolbar That I had with the Explorer. Thanks.

Are there any advantages in using Firefox over Internet Explorer? If I download Firefox, is there any reason I should uninstall the Internet Explorer?

The Network Adaptor had been enabled, and I did disable it. I did a reboot, and this should be the end of this problem. The problem being peroidical without any patern is the only disquieting aspect, time will tell. I hope this never becomes trite...thanks again.

The uninstall or disable the network card or onboard LAN on your PC. That message is definitely related to the network connection, not to the modem's internet connection. You have a network device loaded and enabled, it's looking for the network, it doesn't find one and you get the error message.

right-click My Computer and choose Properties. On the hardware tab choose Device Manager. Right-click the Network Adaptor and choose Disable.

Thanks again Catweazle, that's more like what I had expected to find, I just didn't know where to begin..this is all part of the learning curve. In retrospec, I remember when I reformated the computer last, that while re-installing the modem's software, there was a note informing me that I was showing both phone line and LAN capabilities, should this have been a red flag, or even a part of what your talking about?
I followed your instructions, and now it's a game of wait and see. Thanks again, it's reasuring to know that there is a human data base available out there.

Hi,

There's been a few topics on here about the problem you're having. Use the Search feature:
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/search.php?

and enter the keywords
network cable unplugged

as your search criteria. Let us know if the unformation in there helps or not, please.

Hi Catweazle, I went there and read it but I don't see any connection to my problem. I'm not networking, I'm strictly snailophone line to the modem in my computer. I do appreciate the thought, any others?

Periodically I get a pop-up down by the clock that reads..Local Area Connection..Network Cable Unpluged. This occurs on or off line, with no dicernible patern. So far I haven't noticed any ill effects associated with it, but I'm still a novice. Any ideas of just what I've got happening here?

For some good comic relief, try going to Alice Schubach's Home Page, go to Microsoft Bashing, and scroll down to Hidden Windows Settings.

I recently had a problem with a hitch hicker, after dealing with the main problem I was left with a couple of small problems which I've been able to track down. A friend suggested that I try "System Mechanic 5" to run down the remaining problems, I did, and while defragmenting, the SM5 stoped to explain that it could not finish because of a problem section of the hard drive. No explanation...jut that. Is there any way to check the HD?

939. lot better in my opinion and much much newer.

I can appreciate your opinion, ( doing my best Sergeant Frank Friday impression) but " we're just looking for the facts mam".

maybe you antivirus program is set to scan floppy on shutdown

Yep! It was supposed to do it when starting up, I disabled that feature and it disappeared when shutting down. Now that I know what's going on, I'll re-enable the feature. I guess I'm suffering from residual paranoia.

Thanks caperjack...dcc

I'm still in the throws of making a decision regarding what board and processor to use...specifically, whether to go with a socket 754, or the 939. The first thing going through your mind when reading this is probably "what are you giong to use it for"? I'm not into games, but I will most likely wind up doing some video editing, and I will have a couple of CAD and electrical estimating programs, the rest will be fairly normal.
I know just enough about the two to be dangerous, and to realise that one of the key differences is the type of memory, I should at least tell you that I will be going with a Athlon processor. Which socket would you use, and why?
Remember...someday I could growup to be just like you!

I recently had a hitch hicker, and after downloading the Spyware Doctor, I thought that would be the end of that...alas, it wasn't. I have a backup disc using Drive Image software for my C drive, it was provided with this computer which was a gift from a friend, and it was suggested that it would be faster and easier to restore the C drive with the disc and re-install what ever wasn't saved to the backup disc. Well...after seventeen hours of re-installing and downloading, I still had a few problems. One of these was a message that would appear while going through the start-up, it read: Can not find the file CD SETUP. EXE or one of its components. Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available.... and the ubiquitous "OK" box. Long story short, I went to the registry and deleted what looked like an empty file.. no more problem, no more message.
The second message occurs while shuting down, it reads: Scanning floppy disc drive before shutting down, and then disappears. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? do I need an exorcisim? Is this indicative of some other insidious problem? Any and all thoughts and advice will be gladly accepted. dcc

I'm one of those people who has to test the waters before entering...so after 26 postings here I am.
Name: dcc
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 180 lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Location: Northern California Foothills.
Age: 53
Hobbies: Reading, Camping, fishing, and now computers.
Relationship: Single, cohabit with two cats.
Education: I started as an Applied Piano major in 1971 at
the University of Kentucky, and finished up
with a pair of Associate Science degrees in
1995 from a couple of California Junior
Colleges... I was in no rush.
Memberships: Still waiting to join the "Procarstinators of
America" club.
Music: Classical, R&B, Bluegrass, Country.
Work: Journeyman Electrician.
Favorite food: It seems anything that will clog an artery.
Favorite Movies: Classics from the 19030s-1950s, or if I'm
looking for an escape..anything with
gratuitous sex and violence.
Favorite TV Shows: Science and History channels, Northern
Exposure, and the Si-Fi channel.
Video Games: I'm not really a game person.
Likes: People I can learn from, live music, the great
outdoors, people who don't take themselves
too seriously, and a good joke.
Dislikes: People who can't seem to latch onto the concept
of tact, and people who don't pruph reed thre'
threads.
I'm looking forward to learning from you, and contributing when and where I can. dcc

If it's a bad bearing, adding oil will only postpone the inevitable, and oil is a dust magnet which has a tendency to magically migrate on its own. I have been known to pinch a penny till Ol' Abe sheds a tear, but even I would invest in a new fan.