Recently Asked Questions
Check out some of the most recently asked questions in our Ask A Question section.
Monitor not working
Here we have a question about someone that cannot get their monitor to work. One day it worked fine, now there no display. They tried another monitor on the same computer and still no luck. The answer? In this case its most likely a fault video card, I recommend replacing the video card.
CRT vs LCD
Here we have someone asking about the quality differences between CRT's and LCD's. The question asker notes that when watching movies on a CRT the display is very hard to see, however on his LCD the definition and display is much better. This is very common. CRT's used to be great, however since LCD's have taken over we now have something much better to compare to. Just like with televisons, out with the old, in with the LCD's!
XPRT6.DLL
Seems like this error will never go away. I've been asked if our XPRT5.DLL fix will fix this issue. I believe it will, so please go and try it. If it doesn't please let me know. Here is our XPRT5.DLL fix.
Unable to connect to wireless network
This person is unable to connect to their wireless network. Often times if you just unplug the power to the router, wait a sec, then plug it in - the connection will work again. You may also have to disconnect from the network on your computer, then reconnect. Also if your network uses WEP encryption you may have to re-enter your WEP key. Bottom line: resetting the settings fixes most of lifes problems.
Google's FriendConnect
Today I added the Google FriendConnect application to the site. I think it'll be a fun way for visitors to interact and ask computer questions. I urge you to join and check it out, I'll also be going over how to create applications for Google's FriendConnect in the future.
Recently Asked Questions - Part 2
XPRT5.DLL / XPRT6.DLL
Many people have had an issue with this file and America Online. I have understood that downloading the ACS software will fix this issue. If you are having this problem and it has not fixed your problem please let me know and I'll help. I'd like to get to the bottom of this issue.
Pop Error After Every Restart
Robert was having an issue when everytime he would start his PC he would get an error message. The answer? Use msconfig to remove the un-wanted startup programs.
Advice On A External Hard Drive
Need advice on what external hard drive to get? Well I don't really have any. Pretty much anything out there @ Best Buy would be good to go. Just make sure you back your data up before its lost!
Upgrading A Notebook Hard Drive
Is it possible to upgrade on notebook purchased on ebay? Of course. Best bet is to let me know the make and model of the laptop so we know what kind to replace it with.
Have a question of your own? Ask it!
Ask A Question - Recent Questions
Just wanted to share some recently asked questions in our 'Ask A Question' section. If you have a question of your own, feel free to ask it. If you are a techie you are welcome to help answer questions asked by others.
- How get pass the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)?
- CPU speed incorrectly shown in system properties?
- Computer keeps turning off
- Disk Read Error on rebuilt Compaq PC
- Change XP language from Japanese to English
Cypher Strength 0 bit - Can't Access Secure Sites
Today was a nightmare. I had a customer that was unable to access secure web sites. They were using Internet Explorer 7 and this happened after a very bad virus. I cleaned up the virus using HiJack This, OTMoveit, and a few other programs. (See a quick guide on how to remove spyware programs). Rebooted and everything was gone. Fantastic. However now they were unable to access secure web sites. So I did what I always do - Googled it. I found a lot of great solutions unforatunately for me none of them worked. I'm happy to say that after a few hours I did figure out what happened and I have the answer here!
Windows automatic updates
I've had this warning pop up on my laptop for about 4 days now. I hate it. I'm telling the world now I hate Window's automatic updates. The whole thing sounds so nice, your computer will be kept up to date automatically. Unfortunately its a major pain in the ass. Microsoft will update your computer automatically but then this stupid message will pop up over and over again. Worst than that the Window takes focus over everything you are doing. So you could be typing then lookup and see everything you just typed didn't make it to the screen. You could have even accidentally clicked yes on this message and begun a reboot you didn't want.
I just hate stuff like this, its annoying. I'm still running Vista so you may wonder if the problem still exist on Vista. Yep. It does and its even more annoying. Note to Microsoft - please make it so if you have automatic updates on it doesn't beg you to restart your pc. Just have it install the next time the PC is restarted.
'Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?'
Secure your wireless network
In my last post I went over how to add a Linksys router to an existing Internet connection. Now we'll go over how to secure the wireless networks so other people can't use it.
Log into the router
- Open Internet Explorer and type in the following address http://192.168.1.1
- You will then be prompted for a user name and password, the user name field you can just leave blank and the password is 'admin'.
You are now logged into the router. You can take a look around see the different options in there. We are mainly concerned with the wireless network so click 'Wireless' at the top and then below that click 'Wireless Security'. We are now editing the wireless security settings for your Linksys router. There are a few choices you can use here, for the sake of keeping this simple I'm just going to use WEP 128bit encryption.
- Select WEP encryption
- Then select 128 bit encryption
- Now you can either type something in key 1 or use a pass phrase to generate it. Easiest way is just to type in numbers in key 1 until you have 26 characters. So for example you could type in 12121212121212121212121212 or whatever
- Then hit 'Save Settings'
Now your wireless will need the code 12121212121212121212121212 in order to connect. So lets go to your laptop and do the following:
- Hit 'View Available Wireless Networks' by right clicking on the Wireless connection icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen, or its in the Control Panel in Network Connections.
- If you were connected before you may have to hit disconnect from the network. If you were not just click on the network name and then hit connect.
- You'll have to enter the WEP key twice
- Hit OK and you are good to go!
I tried to keep that pretty simple. If you have any questions just leave a comment and I'll help.
Connecting a wireless router to an existing Internet connection
This question was recently asked in our Ask A Question section, the exact question is here. The situation is that this person already has an existing Internet connection. For the purpose of this guide I'm going to assume they have a cable Internet provided. Lets take a look at what we'll need to get. We'll start with the basis, a Linksys Wireless Router. There are a lot of wireless routers out there and everyone certainly has their own opinions. For me personally I like Linksys (Cisco) and its really easy to setup so this tutorial will go over how to set one up with a cable Internet provider.
Materials Needed
- Linksys Wireless Router (Model Number: WRT54G)
Steps to take
- Currently right now your cable Internet comes out of the wall and into the cable modem. From there a network cable comes out of the cable modem and into the back of your computer.
- What we are going to do is take the network cable out of the back of the computer and plug it into the WAN (or Internet) port on the Linksys Router. This outputs the Internet into the Linksys Router.
- Now take the included network cable out of the Linksys box and placed it in any of the 4 other ports on the back of the router.
- Put the other end into the computer.
- Unplug the power to your cable modem. Wait a few seconds and plug it back in.
So what this did was take the Internet and place the router in between the modem and the computer. By default the Linksys router will be broardcasting the wireless (insecurely!). Next time I'll go over how to secure your wireless connection so your nosey neighbors don't use it.
Stupid Dell Background
Ok so I'm a reseller for Dell, which means every server I sell is a Dell, which also means I have to remote desktop into many a server. Well unfortunately for me Dell has to brand their login screen with their super high res graphic so every time I must wait for my screen to paint the painful graphic, every single time I need to connect. God forbid I walk away and the screen saver kicks in and I have to witness it all over again.
I'm posting this for everyone in the world to see, edit this registry key:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop\WallpaperDelete that damn value and live happier.
Friday Night Horror's
Last night I was really excited. It was my friend's wife's birthday and they had a limo and I was ready for a night on the town drinking and having fun. That was until then I got the phone call and heard the worst sentence a technician can hear after hours 'Our server is down'. I quickly ran over there, I had a good hour before it was time to go out. Its a really nice Sushi restaurant 5 minutes from my house, I eat there all the time so I really wanted to help them out.
Turns out they have a POS system that is stored as a shared directory on the server. The server would instantly reboot AFTER the login process. This is unique, normally a reboot would occur prior to that (pre-gui) stage. I found out that if I booted it into Safe Mode with Networking the cash registers were able to access the shared directory. However many other functions were disabled because it required the server to boot and a start up file to run.
The computer was custom, which of course is a pain because any notion of easily finding drivers was totally out of the question. Their 'server' was actually running Windows XP Professional and the old providers didn't even put the XP product key stickers on the box! Suddently my Friday night wasn't looking too good. Anyway I popped the side of the box off and got the Intel info, got the drivers, used nLite (as described in my last blog post - wow that came in handy), booted to Windows and did a repair and the process actually worked. Unforatuntely I didn't get out until 11:30pm thus missing all the fun.
