A thread for boring computer questions.

is personal hotspot actually available on your phone plan or did it erroneously appear enabled

I’d try turning hotspot off and on again, and making the Mac forget the password and re-adding it

my parents are running xp on a very old dell optiplex gx520 (!), and it has as far as they know recently crashed after no changes, installations, power surges, etc., with an error at (prior to) boot time of 'sata primary hard disk 0 failure'.

from what i was able to walk them through over the phone, it seems that the boot drive has problems that are unrecoverable from within the windows recovery console.

from what i've read on the internet, there could be a variety of causes for this kind of error, some repairable, some not. if my parents can boot from an install disk and can run windows recovery, is there anything they can do to determine, at least, whether the drive has physically failed versus having some other issue?

Sounds like they shipped with an 80GB hard drive, perhaps a cheap 128-256GB SSD would be a worthy replacement, and put the dead HDD into an enclosure where it could be read by a good recovery utility?

are scandisk or chkdsk on that windows recovery disk? maybe start with something like that

Or - maybe get them an external HDD and then remove the bad drive and freeze it inside an airtight bag - if there is a physical failure this can unstick things for long enough to boot up and copy the essentials off it.

xp yeah, without my having much awareness of what it was doing or could do, i got them to run chkdsk and it was what reported unrepairable problems, with no more info than that. dunno what its diagnostic powers are usually thought to be.

every dell i've worked with has a diagnostics option if you press f12 upon boot up. on a model that old, that may have to be run from a separate disc, but if it's an available option, it will tell you whether or not the hard drive has failed.

chkdsk /f /r

fixes errors and checks for bad sectors. if they are getting HD error messages it's probably time to just get a new drive. you can get 2TB for $60 these days, and it'll help future proof their setup.

Not sure if anyone can help:

I just downloaded three albums via iTunes Store but I’m without internet at home. The downloads are incomplete and coffee shop wireless doesn’t seem to enable it. Automatic downloads are on not sure why it doesn’t work

When I'm using Google to search for things, my computer is jumping to qxsearch and then https://uk.search.yahoo.com rather than finding Google answers. Is that normal??? I'm using Mozilla.

You have malware. I suggest hurling your computer into the sea.

What would a Plan B be?

Go to your add-ons and see if qxsearch is there. If it is, remove it.

Thanks. Where would I find them?

ctrl-shift-a or look under the 3-bar menu on the upper right

Thanks ... There doesn't seem to be anything much there.

How odd. It occurred to me that I have Norton Security and going through them ... they don't think there's anything wrong.

I remain vaguely paranoid, mind.

what happens if you use any other browser

what is your default search engine set to ?

about:preferences#search

I can use Google on Internet Explorer.

wouldn't you just go to settings or preferences and change the default search engine? sometimes my anti-virus security software resets mine to enable "safe search" but it's probably because they have some deal with yahoo to make it the default.

X-post. It's set to Google on Mozilla.

sarahell, I guess I could just not use Mozilla (which is where the problem seems to be happening). I'm just a bit nervous that something is going on, for some reason.

Hmm. Removing an extension called PDF 1.2.1 seems to have resolved the issue (I removed it on the grounds that it was the only extension ...)

if you think that that was responsible for the search hijack then you can report it on the add-ons page (although i don't think anybody reads the comments becuase it already says "This extension add Google Analytics in all your pages and send all personals datas to this person")

(there's certainly a shitload more code in the new version compared with 1.1.0, but it's all packed and unreadable by mere humans)

Having seemingly resolved the issue ... should I be worried about anything? My bank account hasn't been emptied (yet)!

that probably won't happen, but your operating systems has now become a cryptocurrency mining slave 4eva!

I don't even know what that means.

don't worry imo

maybe run a bit of anti malware

I'm just joking djh. I have been downloading illegal stuff from dodgy Russian torrent proxy sites for years now, never had my bank account emptied yet. Although sometimes I do suspect my slow-ass running PC is actually a cryptocurrency mining slave!

just make sure you have good password protection etc

"your operating systems has now become a cryptocurrency mining slave 4eva!"

To be honest, you could tell me anything at this point and I would believe it.

there was something on BBC WS earlier about smartphones melting, because they have been hijacked by cryptocurrency mining malware that fatally overheats them. There is definitely something going on here. When your devices processing power are being hacked - it could go on for months - with only a vague feeling things are running a bit slower being the only symptom. The only sensible solution is not to worry for 10 seconds and then scream "We are all going to die!" very loudly and panic.

"The only sensible solution is not to worry for 10 seconds and then scream "We are all going to die!" very loudly and panic."

I own this.

anyone ever have quicklook die on os x, so that it shows stills but can't play the videos containing them, or gets caught on a cycling buffering icon?

i tried running qlmanage to no apparent effect, but restarting the whole machine undid whatever the problem was.

seems to be a lot of discussion on the web about it not working at all, or breaking after os upgrades, but not this. i hadn't made any changes recently, so it seems like it had to be some kind of cache or preference corruption or something.

I’ve been having some issues with quick look and pdfs. It seems to be iCloud related, or, at least it only seems to present on files that are in an iCloud directory.

huh, i hope that's not my problem, since it would mean i have icloud turned on for a folder i didn't turn it on for

I do worry about how pervasive iCloud hooks are into the file manger and filesystem.

iCloud or OneDrive - choose your poison!

Trying to burn a CD-R and getting the following message in Windows Media Player:

Windows Media Player could not complete burning because the disc is not compatible with your drive. Try inserting a different kind of recordable media or use a disc that supports a write speed that is compatible with your drive.

while Media Jukebox 14 is telling me:

Power Calibration Area Error.

Any ideas? Clean the player, maybe?

sounds like it's complaining about the speed. you can often change the burn speed, so instead of burning at 32x, say, reduce it to something like 16x or lower and it might work (disks are rated for certain burn speeds, which might be lower than the default your drive is using)

some background reading: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/media/dvd-media-concepts.htm

but a lot of these articles i found when searching were from 2004 when 16x was considered fast.

wmp specific help: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-change-burn-speed-in-windows-media-player-11-2438900

Thanks Koogs - appreciated, as ever. Running a five quid PC World cleaner through it has fixed the problem (for now, at least).

Windows Media Player? 2002 called

PC World? ...

I haven't used Media Player for years, though its installed on my computer. I was trying to suss out whether it was a software or hardware issue ... I realise that burning CDs seems weird to some people, too.

a five quid PC World cleaner
like, cleaning the lens?

Ha! Yes, it was that obvious.

hehe, cool