Direct MP3 Download: Podnutz Daily #75 – Had a Very Sticky Dell Today
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Sorry, I forgot to hit record in uStream last night.
I am still looking for feedback on the
Podnutz Lounge
Any suggestions or feedback on the java, drop me a line.
Howard is in the show chat to night.
I meant to give him a hard time about finally picking up his computer.
He says he is afraid to turn it on.
Dell laptop:
LED lights come on. No fans spinning. No video.
Runs for three seconds and turns off.
Pulled out hardware one at a time to see
if any of the hardware was causing it to short out.
Troubleshooting narrowed it down to
the processor or the motherboard.
Sticky substance on the motherboard causing corrosion.
I used an electrical cleaner and a toothbrush to remove.
Purell removed what the cleaner didn’t.
Never use water!
The motherboard booted up successfully once.
After I put it back together it would power off again.
Looks like we need to replace the motherboard.
CompaQ laptop:
Windows features like My Computer and internet would not load.
Ran the built in recovery partition
did a non destructive system recovery to save his data.
This also loads all the drivers and
brings the PC back to the factory settings.
That fixed the problem. Customer was happy.
Removed Norton too and installed AVG8.
Dell desktop filled with spyware.
Dad and I are debating on this one.
As we were cleaning it up we realized
there were four accounts on this machine.
One account would not show up in safe mode.
It would only show in the normal Windows enviornment.
We clean in safe mode so we have to go into
each account and clean every profile.
I feel that there is a spyware program running in that profile
and that program prevents it from loading in safemode
as a devious attempt to thwart its removal.
The debate:
Maybe that is the latest thing, or maybe Windows is just acting wonky.
New iPod Nano was recently released.
Looking at the new netbooks with 7″ screens like the Asus
All of the major manufacturers are coming out with these.
Liking the Acer Netbook with Intel Atom processor
and Windows XP for only $350.
I am looking for feedback on the Acer.
Wanting to get one of these netbooks.
Email from Anonymous:
A possible solution for Jeff who keeps getting
optical drives that will not open.
Maybe the button on the drive itself has gone.
Navigate to the drive in Windows
Right-Click on it and choose eject.
This always works for me if the drive will not slide open using the button.
Email from Craig:
Held for the Philly Tech Guys podcast
this Saturday 08.13.08 @ 2pm
I think this email will be a great topic for discussion.
Thanks for the email! I like it!
Email from Mark:
Paragraph long compliment on my podcast.
Not reading this either. I enoyed it personally.
but I don’t want to toot my own horn.
Second paragraph states:
Regarding burning your tools to CD
so your thumb drive will not catch any virus from the PC.
I use a flash drive with a write-protect switch.
Williams nLite guide was posted to #74 shownotes.
Google document and righteous.
Email from Jason:
Help!
I was copying music from my internal hard drive to my external.
Half way through copying I received an error.
Acknowledged the error & checked the misic files on the external drive.
I tried playing them in Windows Media Player
but they just caused it to freeze up.
Repeating pop-up error is: Unable to save file G: ****.mp3
After restarting my computer the external drive
was not showing up in Windows.
I tried a plugging the drive into a different usb port.
Computer would freese up and the drives access light
would stay lit.
Unplugging the drive from USB unfroze the machine.
Ran Knoppix Live CD to see if I could reformat it
using the built in G-Parted.
Starting up G-Parted froze the machine.
Getting drastic:
Unmounted the case and installed it in my PC.
It was now recognized by the bios.
Put in my XP Pro install disk rebooted and tried to install.
I got as far as the Microsoft ULA. I chose accept.
I chose the external drive from the menu and selected the slow format.
Waited. After 2 hours it formatted the hard drive.
It got stuck at 2% copying the install files.
Drive is just out of 1 year warranty.
40G of music lost.
Still stuck and looking for suggestions.
I verbally contemplate a possible bad hard drive
but offer other suggestions to try.
I am no longer getting voicemail messages.
Thought you guys were my friends !!?
I love playing the voicemail messages.
Call and leave a message if you have solutions
to any of the problems covered in the shows
or ask your own questions regarding issues you are dealing with.
Live call from Sherwin in NY:
Lexmark printer installed on a customer’s machine
and customer was upgrading to a Dell printer.
Uninstalled the Lexmark printer. Drivers and services.
But I could not get the Dell printer to work.
LexBCE server was running as a dependency
under print spooler that kept crashing.
Removed the dependency via cmd prompt — Dell printer now works.
Never ran into that before.
Regarding your mention of the Asus ePC:
I had a user this weekend that forgot his password.
Brand new and running Linux.
F9 full disk recovery.
Live call from Colin aka “Sacs”:
More on the ePCs
He was not impressed until he came face-to-face with one.
Decent machine.
Regarding Jason’s external issue:
Can it be seen in Windows disk manager?
This could determine if it is hardware or software issue.
Regarding AVG and disabling link checker:
Does the icon that runs in the system tray grey out
if you disable link checker?
No. It is still fully functional.
You never load that service
so it does not effect required updates.
