The computer help thread

[Neverfly]

Originally Posted by The_Radiation_Specialist

OK, I know there must be a setting somewhere to change it but, is there anyway to stop the message in Win XP which says "You need to restart in 4 mins to install updates"?

I use classic setting on control panel of XP but...

Start>Control Panel> Security center
On the left you will see some options- the bottom one being "Change how Windows alerts me." Click that and solve all of your lifes problems.

[Whirlpool]

Yeah.. I always have that too...here in the office..

But unfortunately when I clicked the Security Center there's a prompt message saying ..
" You are not authorized to change settings.
Pls contact the IT administrator if you wish to change settings."

[The Supreme Canuck]

Okey-dokey, since this is the centralized place for computer help here...

I posted this on the Apple support forum yesterday, and though everyone seems to have looked at it, no one bothered to answer:

Originally Posted by Me

This is my problem: out of the blue, Quicktime stopped playing embedded files in Firefox. I'm told that I need to download the appropriate plugin. I have re-installed Quicktime more than once, to no avail. Embedded content will run from IE, but not from Firefox - Quicktime does not even appear in the "aboutlugins" page at all.

I have Quicktime 7.3.1 installed on a PC running Windows XP Home SP2, using Firefox 2.0.0.11. Any help would be appreciated.

Does anyone have a clue?

[Roving Philosopher]

Go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Plugins (or whatever the path is to your plugins for firefox). On my computer, I've got six plugins for quicktime. They're called npqtplugin.dll, npqtplugin2.dll, ...., npqtplugin6.dll.

If they're not there, search your computer for the dll files. If you find them, copy them to the plugin folder.

If they are there, try deleting them from the folder, and then reinstalling quicktime (when you've done this before, have you uninstalled quicktime first and then reinstalled it, or just reinstalled over the top of the existing program?).

That's about all I can think to do at this point.

It might be a silly question, but when the embedded content runs in IE, is it using the quicktime plugin, or is it using windows media player?

[Delvo]

I've got a new motherboard with three SATA sockets. They're not numbered on the board or in the manual, and the manual says nothing about what order they should be filled up in or which drives should go where (optical versus hard magnetic, system boot versus non-boot). Does it matter? There's also no indication as to which of the four memory slots to stick the first card or two in. Does that matter?

[victor003]

what's type of the new motherboards

[cjl]

Originally Posted by Delvo

I've got a new motherboard with three SATA sockets. They're not numbered on the board or in the manual, and the manual says nothing about what order they should be filled up in or which drives should go where (optical versus hard magnetic, system boot versus non-boot). Does it matter? There's also no indication as to which of the four memory slots to stick the first card or two in. Does that matter?

Are they all identical in appearance and clustered together, or are they in various locations and/or different colored? If the former, then it probably makes no difference whatsoever, otherwise, it's hard to say without knowing the exact model of the motherboard. I have 2 computers where it does matter - in both cases, certain SATA ports are exclusively for hard drives and allow RAID configuration, while others are general use. Both have more than 3 though (one has 6, one has 7), so I doubt they are specialized when you only have 3.

[Delvo]

They're all the same color and located together. I never even imagined that there might be motherbaords where that wasn't the case!

Once the CPU arrives and I can put it all together, how will the thing know which drive to boot from? With my current computer, I identified the boot drive in the BIOS by its IDE socket number (which was clearly labelled in a diagram in the manual) and master (as opposed to slave) status. Will the SATA sockets just have numbers in the BIOS that I don't get to see until then, or does the BIOS have some way of detecting for itself which drive is bootable? (I'd imagine that even if such a check is possible for SATA drives, it wouldn't work if you had both SATA and IDE drives installed, or I wouldn't have needed to tell the old one with only IDEs which drive to boot from in the first place.)

[The Supreme Canuck]

Originally Posted by Roving Philosopher

Go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Plugins (or whatever the path is to your plugins for firefox). On my computer, I've got six plugins for quicktime. They're called npqtplugin.dll, npqtplugin2.dll, ...., npqtplugin6.dll.

If they're not there, search your computer for the dll files. If you find them, copy them to the plugin folder.

Nowhere on my HD at all. I'm going to try to download the blasted things.

(when you've done this before, have you uninstalled quicktime first and then reinstalled it, or just reinstalled over the top of the existing program?).

First one, then the other - I tried to do a repair, then I just reinstalled the whole thing.

It might be a silly question, but when the embedded content runs in IE, is it using the quicktime plugin, or is it using windows media player?

In Quicktime.

Edit: Right, then. I've downloaded the Quicktime dlls, and the plugins show up in about: plugins. But I get a pop-up error message when I try to view QT content: "The quicktime plugin requires the Quicktime system extension version 5 or later"

And so I'm stumped again.

Edit 2: So another site is telling me to delete the dlls, then reset QT's MIME settings. Fine and dandy. But when I go to do that, there is literally nothing in the little MIME box for me to select. Reinstalling does not help. What the heck is going on?

[cjl]

Originally Posted by Delvo

They're all the same color and located together. I never even imagined that there might be motherbaords where that wasn't the case!

Oh, absolutely

My current motherboard in my latest computer is this one. The red and black SATA ports support hardware RAID 0 or 1, and can only be run as RAID ports. The other 5 are general purpose, and can be either controlled by the main RAID controller (0, 1, 5, or 10) or be separate drives (or a CD/DVD drive, as the case may be).

Originally Posted by Delvo

Once the CPU arrives and I can put it all together, how will the thing know which drive to boot from? With my current computer, I identified the boot drive in the BIOS by its IDE socket number (which was clearly labelled in a diagram in the manual) and master (as opposed to slave) status. Will the SATA sockets just have numbers in the BIOS that I don't get to see until then, or does the BIOS have some way of detecting for itself which drive is bootable?

Usually, it will autodetect the devices, none of which will be bootable at first of course. Usually when you go into setup for the first time, it should have a boot device list, which will allow you to set the boot order by device (the devices should be autodetected, and listed as what they are, not "SATA 1" or anything like that). Then, when you try to boot up, it will simply go through the boot list until it finds a bootable device and boot from that. I usually put the CD drive as the first boot device - that way if you need to do any repairs to the operating system, you just put in the disk and away you go, and all other times, it checks the CD drive and sees nothing bootable, and then moves on to the main hard disk.

The default setting in every SATA board I have seen is to throw every single detected device into the boot list, in some order or another, so that if anything is bootable, it will find it and boot from it. I typically rearrange the boot list, but you could probably just leave it alone and be fine.

Oh - and in a pure SATA setup, all drives are masters - there are no slaves, and also no need to specify master status.

Originally Posted by Delvo

(I'd imagine that even if such a check is possible for SATA drives, it wouldn't work if you had both SATA and IDE drives installed, or I wouldn't have needed to tell the old one with only IDEs which drive to boot from in the first place.)

I honestly have no idea about this - both my current systems are pure SATA, and the prior ones were pure PATA/IDE. However, based on the BIOS on my current one and the setup options, I believe you would tell it whether the boot drive was SATA or IDE, and after that everything would be like a pure SATA or pure PATA setup.

[Roving Philosopher]

Originally Posted by The Supreme Canuck

Edit 2: So another site is telling me to delete the dlls, then reset QT's MIME settings. Fine and dandy. But when I go to do that, there is literally nothing in the little MIME box for me to select. Reinstalling does not help. What the heck is going on?

Only other thing I can think to try is an earlier version of Quicktime 7.

[CodeSlinger]

The_Supreme_Canuck,

I don't have a solution for your Quicktime woes. But you might try Quicktime Alternative instead. It's a small suite of codecs and plugins that allows you to play Quicktime media files without having to install the (IMHO) bloated Quicktime software. I never use Quicktime any more, I just install Quicktime Alternative on any machine I use. Here's the page:

Quicktime Alternative

Quicktime Alternative 2.2.0 is the one you want.

[Moose]

Oooh. Thanks CodeSlinger. That'll be real handy. Quicktime was the last remaining codec set that was giving me trouble.

[CodeSlinger]

I'm happy to be of service

[The Supreme Canuck]

Blah! Old QT doesn't work, either. Looks like I'm going with Alternative - I didn't really want to, but it seems I have little choice.

[man on the moon]

TSC--Have you tried removing and reinstalling firefox all together? Codecs included? Don't know if that would help.

Alternatively, if you can back your files up to an external disk of some sort and do a system restore to some time before the mini-crash that may help too.

[The Supreme Canuck]

I haven't reinstalled Firefox - can't believe I didn't think of that, thanks. And, there was no crash. QT just couldn't find a file or somesuch.