I was and am having a lot of computer problems the last week or so. First my online Maxtor hard drive went bad. The symptoms of this problem were very subtle. Event Log in Windows 2000 Professional started indicating severe problems with the hard disk. I could not copy files or play music files and all functions became sluggish. I guess it was time for the drive to go. I have reformatted it and installed various types of operating systems on it dozens of times. I have hot swapped it, dr...

I now have another monitor. Like the Gateway Vivitron this one is used. The specs. are about the same as the Gateway so I gain no improvement in performance. The good thing is the price was the same as the Gateway brought a few years earlier. It came in at twenty-one dollars (tax included). It is a Dell Trinitron (I’m beginning to think all I basically did was change brand names). I had to go to the web and look up the Pin layout because it seemed to be missing Pin nine. I found out after...

My Gateway2000 Vivitron monitor is on its way out. It’s kind of too soon for me. I had no intentions of buying a new or used monitor any time soon but circumstances seemed to have spoiled that plan. The monitor was an excellent bargain when I purchased it. It came in at a nice twenty-five bucks. It was used of course but it has performed well. The time has been kind of short but for the price I’m not complaining too much. I feel I got my 'money’s worth' out of it. Theoretically a moni...

Shopping for replacement computer parts has enabled me to see the brick and mortar stores (or warehouses) that have good prices (cheap) and those with bad prices (expensive). The stores I went to looking for replacement parts for my computer were Circuit City, BestBuy, Office Max, CompUSA and a warehouse seller that also sells at computer shows (I can’t give you an exact name because he uses several). The store that surprised me the most was CompUSA. This store carries all computer related...

Well, I am back up and running with a new mainboard (motherboard), swap drive, memory, and hard drive. My Athlon 1800+ chip is working fine. With a little assistance from the seller of this board I was able to get the CPU running at its proper speed. It was not damaged in some way when I burned out my old motherboard as I initially suspected. My hot swapper stopped functioning (which I feel is kind of strange). I do not know if this was due to the burning out of my computer but I do know ...

Just built a computer for a relative. The project started off as a maintenance call on his Pentium III machine but quickly evolved into a major project once I discovered the drivers needed for this integrated sound, video and modem board were unavailable from the Matsonic motherboard making company (now making motherboards under other brand names). It really bothers me when tech businesses do not support their products with online complete documentation, drivers, and other utilities that...

I’ve been working on the computer of an in-law and a woman who had a problem with not being able to view DVDs anymore and a slowdown in the functioning of her computer. The problem of not being able to play DVDs was due to the fact that the software she was using to play DVDs was a trail version and expired after thirty days. I’m surprised she didn’t have any software that came with the DVD drive that would enable her to play DVDs. Then again I haven’t ask her if she has a disc that ca...

The home network I used to get on the Internet is down. I think I mentioned in a past blog that the ISP used by the person I access the web through had connection problems that were resolved. Well, the situation just as quickly (a day or so later) became unresolved. I now have to access the Internet through other means, which is just not convenient at all. In order to try and help out I attempted to find out if a state utilities agency regulated the ISP (in this case the telephone comp...

256MB DDR 2700 memory was purchased. The brand name is Kybyte and it was brought at Staples. It was not really a good deal with a final cost of 39.94 (not counting tax) after a 20.00 mail-in rebate. The only reason I went for it was because it was the best priced 256MB 2700 memory at a ‘brick and mortar’ store in the area I live in. There were better deals at Best Buy where you could purchase 512MB 2700DDR memory (Kingston brand) for about $59.00 with a $30.00 mail-in rebate. The same type...

I feel the need to upgrade my computer. There are several things I am not happy with since I added a DVD +R ,-R, and RW drive to my computer. There are two things I think I definitely need to upgrade. One is my CPU. I now have an AMD 1800 +. I do not think this is enough processing power since the DVD drive was installed. I’m going to have to get an AMD 2600+ or higher processor to satisfy my processing power needs. I think I may have to increase the amount of memory in my system also...

On my last blog entry I forgot to list the prices of the items I talked about. Neither of the items were exceptional bargains. The Micro keyboard was purchased at Circuit City for $10.59 (after taxes) and the USB thumb drive was a slight bargain for a 128-megabyte USB drive coming in at $21.20 (after taxes) and it was also purchased from Circuit City. The Kingston USB drive came in at about ten dollars cheaper than average as of this date (at least when purchased from brick-and-mortar sto...

I have a 128-megabyte USB thumb drive. This drive is 28 megabytes larger than my old Zip drive. It is solid state and some say it can take a beating without loosing data. I find this amazing. It’s good to see technology in data storage advancing so nicely. I wonder how far away from having larger capacity storage devices that could replace the present type of hard disk drive with all those moving parts that can become more easily damaged than the Scandisk camera cards or the USB thumb driv...

I had a problem with my IDE cables today. What would happen is the BIOS would not pick up the proper size of the hard drive and would then not boot because of the inability to detect a boot sector. The first thing I did was change my 80-wire IDE cable but it still didn’t work. This ‘threw me off because the odds are against one having two bad IDE cables so I went off in another direction. Occasionally I had been loosing the CMOS setting, which in most cases indicates a bad board batt...

I had a chance to mess around a little with Microsoft's Vista operating system over the weekend. I wasn't that impressed with what I saw. Microsoft claims Vista is selling very well, but I know of only one person who has Vista (Vista Basic). The only reason he has it is because he brought a new computer and it came with the Vista operating system. I guess Microsoft is selling Vista to new computer manufacturers. I haven't heard of any businesses rushing out to upgrade to Vista eithe...

I recently had the pleasure of troubleshooting an Apple computer Powerbook G4 (laptop computer). It had the Mac OS X operating system installed, running with a 1.33 Ghz CPU with 512 mb of DDR memory. The Powerbook was a twelve-inch screen machine with a DVD burner and GeForce FX video adapter. I had to crack an administrator account password, delete the account and charge the battery. The owner was having trouble re-charging the battery and deleting the account. While doing the assigned...