FAO Computer Nerds

[Jenks]

really fucking me off right now is my laptop. the final step (for someone who doesn't know how to really fix computers) was to do a system recovery and start fresh like i pulled the laptop out of the box.

what is happening: When i watch youtube, any video really, or try to encode say, a 1.5 gig wav file to mp3, seems anything that is a bit taxing on the system....it goes black and shuts off.

wtf? got really bad there for awhile where i couldn't even watch a 1 min youtube video without it crashing.

backed up the important shit on an external drive, and wiped the hd clean with a sys restore.

fired the laptop back up, good as new. it's basically stripped clean, and it's still doing it. not as bad, or as often as before, bit still happening.

overheating?
ram issues?
????

looking for any ideas before i sell my body for a macbook pro.

[feather]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

Wow, I've never heard of such a problem, certainly not when watching youtube (which shouldn't be too CPU intensive). From the way you described it (sounds like anything that might involve some CPU work), best guess would be that your ram or cpu is fucked. I would suggest maybe your video is fucked but that shouldn't affect MP3 encoding.

Do you play any games on the notebook? Wondering if doing other CPU intensive stuff shuts down the notebook too.

Having said all that ...

MBP > Sell your body

[arielus]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

how old is it?
model?
more details!

[Corven]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

sounds like it might be overheating .. was it on batteries or was it plugged in when it was shutting down?

[Kamal]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

reformat / reinstall

Sounds like something got majorly corrupted / infected / fucked up (in the registry).

Fyi for something so drastic as a shutdown, highly doubt a system restore would be your fix.

[feather]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

He said he wiped the hd clean with a system restore ... I assumed he formatted and used his notebook's CDs to reinstall?

[Kamal]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

no, a system restore will not wipe the HD clean, it merely restores the essential system files / registry configuration to a certain point back in time.

System restore will not fix a virus issue (if that is what he has) and neither will windows run system restore effectively if the issue with the OS is of the magnitude he describes. I was hit by a bad trojan last month and I did a system restore to several different points in the past. It ran like it worked ok and at the very last minute it said System restore was unable to restore your computer to the previous date.

A format deletes the partition (if thats how you choose to do it) and reinstalls the OS from scratch essentially restoring corrupted files/removing any virus/any other problem with the OS.

[Jenks]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

sounds like it might be overheating .. was it on batteries or was it plugged in when it was shutting down?

ya know what's weird...when i was encoding the 1.6gig wav to mp3, it shut down in about 30 seconds. i left it off for a few hours, turned it back on and encoded the entire thing no problem.

i was having problems like this before and never heard my laptop fan run. figuring it was the fan, and not being smart enough to replace it myself, i bought one of those fan trays for the laptop to sit on, and it's worked fine for months...this problem only started reoccurring recently.

kamal is well aware of my issues with this laptop, lol.

afraid i'm about due for a new one but don't want to buy anything until i can afford a mac book pro. also hate to get a new one since this one is an athlon64 with a gig of ram. should be sufficient for now, but it's not working properly.

[Jenks]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

how old is it?
model?
more details!

@ 2 years

Gateway 7422

[Kamal]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

regarding the MBP Jenks, this past weekend I screwed around on a brand new MBP for a few hours.

Some of my brief first-hand/first time observations of the unit

• Designwise its incredible, no doubt about the physical appearance of it.
• The screen resolution is unreal. [ms] and even photos on my own photo blog looked stunning (unlike anything I've seen before). The rendering is just wicked.
• The backlit keyboard is phenomenal, I turned on the MBP in a dimly lit basement at night and was awestruck by how nice it looks.
• I missed the right click button way more than I thought, apparently holding the Function (or was it the Apple Key) and clicking the mouse button brings to front a menu which you can use.
• Yet right clicking on the desktop doesnt bring to front the normal menu that you're accustomed to.
• It took jumping through quite a few hoops to setup a photo as the desktop background. Not as simple as "right clicking" on the image in your browser window and choosing "set as desktop background". Had to first save it to the HD, then open the Appearance control panel, navigate to the image and set it as the wallpaper.
• The "menu" (i.e. File / Edit / View / etc) that appears in the window/program of each application in M$ is static in Macs i.e. independent application windows are devoid of menus. There is a similar static menu that appears on top even when you view the desktop and the menu becomes active for the active window/application.
• Was very surprised to See Norton Ant-Virus / Internet Security suite pre-installed on the laptop (it was the property of the University and came pre-installed, so I'm guessing Macs, or better yet said, Mac files can potentially carry viruses, if not infected by them).
• Has an HDMI port that can come really handy if you want to use iLife

I know a couple of the items are merely an issue of getting used to but from a first time hands on experience, I wasn't as "blown away" as I thought I would've been (I dont consider myself a weakling in the computing department and I walked away feeling like a total noob after having played with it).

The learning curve will probably take away from the joy of immediately owning one and by the time you get used to it, you'll end up being just another mac user.

[Jenks]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

every pc i've had since the abacus has been a pain in the ass eventually, yet i see mac users on 5 year old laptops still doing shit cleaner than my new pc will do.

[asdf_admin]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

missed the right click button way more than I thought, apparently holding the Function (or was it the Apple Key) and clicking the mouse button brings to front a menu which you can use.

buy a Apple Mighty Mouse and enable the right button feature. You get the goods back.

took me 48 hours to adjust. simple, effective and powerful world.

[toasty]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

looking for any ideas before i sell my body for a macbook pro.

Was just playing around with a MBP the other day at an Apple store. Feels like old times. I've given myself an artificial prohibition from getting one until Leopard comes out, but that gets harder and harder with each trip I go on toting around a clodhopping, temperamental PC laptop.

If you end up in a spot where you find that you have to get a replacement right now, bite the bullet, get the MBP (lots of cards out there have intro 0% for long enough to pay it off easy), and tell Bill Gates to kiss your ass.

[asdf_admin]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

Mbp!
Mbp!
Mbp!

[toasty]

Re: FAO Computer Nerds

[*]The screen resolution is unreal. [ms] and even photos on my own photo blog looked stunning (unlike anything I've seen before). The rendering is just wicked.

Do you recall if this was a matte or glossy monitor?