My Dell has a mind of it's own

dirkdeftly · 17th May 2002, 01:16

Last night I was the very last person to use my family computer (my personal comp is shit). I came back down this afternoon, again, no one had used it since I got off last night. My sister had been telling me that Sonique had stopped working, for some reason. I opened it up, and it wasn't making any sound. So, with my enourmous intellect, I figured out that Sonique's volume had been turned all the way down to 0%. The last time I had used it, it had been working fine. However, after I turned it up, things still weren't working. I dismissed it simply as a misworking of a new version of Sonique, and went into Winamp to work on my new AVS pack. However, I soon discovered that Winamp wasn't making any noise either!
SOMEHOW, since last night, with no one using the computer, the WAV volume had been turned down all the way.
Demons? Spirits? My cat walking over the keyboard? We may never know...

Atmo · 17th May 2002, 01:26

Sonique is evil....It's possesed your computer and making it do weird strange sick twisted eerie godless evil stuff....

dirkdeftly · 17th May 2002, 01:42

Sonique is no more evil than Winamp - but I refuse to let one of my own posts become an X vs. Y thread.

*comes back the next morning to discover a pipe filled with opium sticking out of the disk drive*

Omit Name · 17th May 2002, 02:16

my monitor works fine but every now and again it blinks. <---- true story

BMWboy · 17th May 2002, 02:37

about two weeks ago my monitor (which is made by compaq) decicided that 999 is a good number for the clock phase. this cause the display to be screwed up at 1024x768 with a 60 hz refresh rate. this prompted me to reinstall the drivers, followed soon thereafter by windows. I was about to junk the video card when i accidently bumped the "AUTO" button, which sets the monitor settings for the best viewing experience automatically. the clock phase is supposed to be at max of 48, right now it is -9.

Atmo · 17th May 2002, 02:41

The thing that gets me is when you resize a window, place it where you want it to go, and then close it. It rarely stays in the right spot or keeps the same size.

jon_joy_1999 · 17th May 2002, 02:42

my computer beeps randomly, anywhere from 1 - 10 minutes between beeps. Its a Dell OptiPlex GX110. also when it beeps the screen inverts its colors

Huehuetenango · 17th May 2002, 02:58

mine randomly turns itself off and then on again for no reason at all

and lately it's taken to crashing while sitting doing nothing
i turned on my computer, used it for ten minutes
left the room
came back, and explorer.exe crashed

jon_joy_1999 · 17th May 2002, 03:06

do you run windows 2000 or later

Huehuetenango · 17th May 2002, 03:08

who was that directed at?
me?
win98

jon_joy_1999 · 17th May 2002, 03:12

ya you
since its win 98 I have no answer ohter than the wires to the reset switch have a small piece of insulation missing and micro earthquakes (they happen all the time we just don't notice it) are causing the wires to touch causing the reset

dirkdeftly · 17th May 2002, 05:08

LOL...ANd that's just my DELL, those are some of the most stable computers ever made. I can't begin to tell you what happens to my Compaq.

Well, yeah I can.

As you may have noticed, I'm pleading for MIDI drivers. When I got it, my MIDI worked fine. Somewhere along the line, the damn thing decided that it was going to only play the odd channels, thereby omitting drums (and half of the other channels, of course). It turns out that for some reason it had re-assigned MIDIs to be decoded by a different driver. Now, whenever you leave the sustain on for too long, notes don't play properly, because they don't STOP! Oh, sure, they fade OUT...but the buffers keep them in their memory, and whenever it goes above a certain number (probably 666), it flips out. Not to mention the fact that the open high hat doesn't cut off with a close/closed high hat. I'm pretty sure that's just an IDF thing, but it's friggin annoying.
Also, whenever I decide to close Word after saving a file to the A: (and whenever I do so it's to take it downstairs to the Dell, so the disks never stay in there), it tries to access the disk, but can't - you know how it tries over and over again for about ten seconds, and then stops and continues? Well, mine doesn' stop. I have to find a disk (which I never have around) and put it in for it to actually have the comfort and security of knowing that there's something there, and go away. It never does ANYTHING to the disk.
And those are problems I've been having even after I wiped the friggin' hard drive! Before, I couldn't install anything (from a disk, or a download, or ANYTHING), because it said 'there is not enough room in the Temp [yes, it even capitalized the word 'temp' - capitalist bastards] folder'

Compaqs slogan should be, "Dude, you're goin' to hell!"

Atmo · 17th May 2002, 05:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Atero
Compaqs slogan should be, "Dude, you're goin' to hell!"

Couldnt agree more...

I hate pre-built pc's...Non standard components, overpriced, recovery disks instead of full working versions of the pre-installed software that wont work if it's updraded..........

dirkdeftly · 17th May 2002, 06:06

Dells are pretty nice, tho.

Oh, and did I mention that my modem, a 56K (which is usually decent enough to use) takes about 5 minutes to connect at around 31.6K.
And whenever I restart my comp, it never remembers to save any passwords, preferences, or files that it got rid of when it froze (through autosave)

Atmo · 17th May 2002, 06:19

Dells are about the best of a bad bunch IMO....They do make some nice cases that make working on them nice and easy, snap out components etc. Other than being way overpriced theyre ok.

Kenny D. · 17th May 2002, 07:00

I think maybe you are blaming the computer when you should be blaming the OS or other software. I have nothing but praise for my Dell Dimension L866, but my Windows Me is another story.

BMWboy · 17th May 2002, 08:47

he means that pre-built computers tend to use generic mother boards, and they are not getting the max performace out of the hardware. now, i don't buy pre-built computers, so i don't know if they all do that, but a good example is gateway. my mom is starting to devlop mild arthrtis in her knee, so it was getting painful for her to go upstairs to use the computer, so my dad built her a computer, and since she doesnt need that much, he got an 800Mhz AMD duron, but with a generic gateway motherboard. my dads PC is a 750 with a good motherboard they both have 256MB of PC133 Ram, and they both have only 7200 rpm harddrives. other than the cpu's and the mobos, they are almost identical. my dads machine(while slower on paper) benchmarks twice as fast as my moms machine(using nortons benchmark), mainly because of the mobo.

zootm · 17th May 2002, 10:19

atero, as for your dell problem, try installing the latest DirectX (yes, i know more micro$oft is not whaqt you need right now...) - i used to have a computer game that would turn the volume all the way down when it quit... i think it may have been bitter.

Kenny D. · 17th May 2002, 11:39

Quote:

he means that pre-built computers tend to use generic mother boards, and they are not getting the max performace out of the hardware.

I dig ! But if you are new to computing, as I was when I bought my Dell, you don`t know all the finer points as to hardware, performance,etc. I now realize I might have gotten a little more bang for my buck. But I could have done a lot worse too!
Probably the integrated graphics is it`s biggest shortcoming but it has thus far proven adequate for my needs and I don`t regret buying it. I agree with Atmo, for factory-built, Dell is tops.

Damn I hope Michael Dell reads these forums. I could sure use a kickback !

Vie · 17th May 2002, 18:28

My computer is a satanist every time I run a game on it it gose all slow and crapy but when my sister (who is worshiped by satan) uses it it runs way above spec!

It is a very evil litt... "what are you doing Vie? I carnt let you do that Vie."

dirkdeftly · 17th May 2002, 19:13

Heh, then there's my dad, who breaks machines when he gets near them. Whenever he uses our computer, he's using it to print something - and something always goes wrong with the printer.

Omit Name · 17th May 2002, 19:42

2 to 3 weeks ago when i took a plain printscreen screenshot (600x800)and saved it as a png the file would end up being 100-150 in size (small enough for me to attatch it here without resizing.) but when i do the same now its five times that.

when i was younger i would make electronics fail when i entered the room <--- true story

BMWboy · 17th May 2002, 20:10

the only pre-built computer I'd get would be one from alienware. you can get god's own computer from those guys.
http://www.alienware.com/

dirkdeftly · 17th May 2002, 23:09

Quote:

when i was younger i would make electronics fail when i entered the room

LOL, you should put that in your sig, Omit Name. A friend of mine could actually blow out electronics when he was really pissed off. One time he was having a fight with his mom and went for a walk - in the morning there was a strange path of blown out street lights.

Aero Zeppelin · 19th May 2002, 04:15

My Dell sucks. Or maybe it's just Windows Me. When I first start up my PC, the system resources are always REALLY low, like 50%. Then, they get get so low that everything goes crazy and the screen blacks out and then comes back partially. It's hell.

Does anyone know if I can install Win98 SE from an upgrade CD over WinMe? I am kind of worried that the video card might not work cuz it was specifically said to go with WinMe.

SSJ4 Gogitta · 19th May 2002, 04:36

good way to keep winamp from changing:

first, set it exactlly how you want it, even the monitor position, skin, volume, shuffle/repeat.. all that stuff.

brows to C:\Program Files\Winamp\

find the winamp.ini file, right click it and hit properties. now change it from archive to read only.

Now no matter what someone does to winamp, after you close it and reopen it, it will be in the same window possition, volume level and all that as it was at the time you made the ini file read only.

Nofx Guy · 19th May 2002, 07:05

Quote:

Originally posted by AeroLed286
My Dell sucks. Or maybe it's just Windows Me. When I first start up my PC, the system resources are always REALLY low, like 50%. Then, they get get so low that everything goes crazy and the screen blacks out and then comes back partially. It's hell.

Does anyone know if I can install Win98 SE from an upgrade CD over WinMe? I am kind of worried that the video card might not work cuz it was specifically said to go with WinMe.

the video card will work, you will just need to install the drivers for it..

as for upgrading to 98 from winme...it is possible....

---//

i dont have any problems with my pc, but thats because i built it to my needs and tweaked it the way i wanted it....pre-built pc's == shit

17th May 2002, 01:16	#1
dirkdeftly Forum King Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Cydonia, Mars Posts: 2,651	My Dell has a mind of it's own Last night I was the very last person to use my family computer (my personal comp is shit). I came back down this afternoon, again, no one had used it since I got off last night. My sister had been telling me that Sonique had stopped working, for some reason. I opened it up, and it wasn't making any sound. So, with my enourmous intellect, I figured out that Sonique's volume had been turned all the way down to 0%. The last time I had used it, it had been working fine. However, after I turned it up, things still weren't working. I dismissed it simply as a misworking of a new version of Sonique, and went into Winamp to work on my new AVS pack. However, I soon discovered that Winamp wasn't making any noise either! SOMEHOW, since last night, with no one using the computer, the WAV volume had been turned down all the way. Demons? Spirits? My cat walking over the keyboard? We may never know... "guilt is the cause of more disauders than history's most obscene marorders" --E. E. Cummings

17th May 2002, 01:26	#2
Atmo The Freak (Forum King) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 9,400	Sonique is evil....It's possesed your computer and making it do weird strange sick twisted eerie godless evil stuff.... :Psykotech:

17th May 2002, 01:42	#3
dirkdeftly Forum King Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Cydonia, Mars Posts: 2,651	Sonique is no more evil than Winamp - but I refuse to let one of my own posts become an X vs. Y thread. comes back the next morning to discover a pipe filled with opium sticking out of the disk drive "guilt is the cause of more disauders than history's most obscene marorders" --E. E. Cummings

17th May 2002, 02:41	#6
Atmo The Freak (Forum King) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 9,400	The thing that gets me is when you resize a window, place it where you want it to go, and then close it. It rarely stays in the right spot or keeps the same size. :Psykotech:

17th May 2002, 05:08	#12
dirkdeftly Forum King Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Cydonia, Mars Posts: 2,651	LOL...ANd that's just my DELL, those are some of the most stable computers ever made. I can't begin to tell you what happens to my Compaq. Well, yeah I can. As you may have noticed, I'm pleading for MIDI drivers. When I got it, my MIDI worked fine. Somewhere along the line, the damn thing decided that it was going to only play the odd channels, thereby omitting drums (and half of the other channels, of course). It turns out that for some reason it had re-assigned MIDIs to be decoded by a different driver. Now, whenever you leave the sustain on for too long, notes don't play properly, because they don't STOP! Oh, sure, they fade OUT...but the buffers keep them in their memory, and whenever it goes above a certain number (probably 666), it flips out. Not to mention the fact that the open high hat doesn't cut off with a close/closed high hat. I'm pretty sure that's just an IDF thing, but it's friggin annoying. Also, whenever I decide to close Word after saving a file to the A: (and whenever I do so it's to take it downstairs to the Dell, so the disks never stay in there), it tries to access the disk, but can't - you know how it tries over and over again for about ten seconds, and then stops and continues? Well, mine doesn' stop. I have to find a disk (which I never have around) and put it in for it to actually have the comfort and security of knowing that there's something there, and go away. It never does ANYTHING to the disk. And those are problems I've been having even after I wiped the friggin' hard drive! Before, I couldn't install anything (from a disk, or a download, or ANYTHING), because it said 'there is not enough room in the Temp [yes, it even capitalized the word 'temp' - capitalist bastards] folder' Compaqs slogan should be, "Dude, you're goin' to hell!" "guilt is the cause of more disauders than history's most obscene marorders" --E. E. Cummings

17th May 2002, 02:16	#4
Omit Name mostly harmless Major Dude Join Date: Jun 2001 Posts: 1,809	my monitor works fine but every now and again it blinks. <---- true story

17th May 2002, 02:37	#5
BMWboy Registered User Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: next the the guy that lives over there Posts: 1,360	about two weeks ago my monitor (which is made by compaq) decicided that 999 is a good number for the clock phase. this cause the display to be screwed up at 1024x768 with a 60 hz refresh rate. this prompted me to reinstall the drivers, followed soon thereafter by windows. I was about to junk the video card when i accidently bumped the "AUTO" button, which sets the monitor settings for the best viewing experience automatically. the clock phase is supposed to be at max of 48, right now it is -9.

17th May 2002, 02:42	#7
jon_joy_1999 Major Dude Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: The box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the street from Jerry's bait Shop. You know the place. Posts: 669	my computer beeps randomly, anywhere from 1 - 10 minutes between beeps. Its a Dell OptiPlex GX110. also when it beeps the screen inverts its colors

17th May 2002, 02:58	#8
Huehuetenango Forum King Join Date: Dec 2000 Posts: 2,546	mine randomly turns itself off and then on again for no reason at all and lately it's taken to crashing while sitting doing nothing i turned on my computer, used it for ten minutes left the room came back, and explorer.exe crashed

17th May 2002, 03:06	#9
jon_joy_1999 Major Dude Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: The box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the street from Jerry's bait Shop. You know the place. Posts: 669	do you run windows 2000 or later

17th May 2002, 03:08	#10
Huehuetenango Forum King Join Date: Dec 2000 Posts: 2,546	who was that directed at? me? win98

17th May 2002, 03:12	#11
jon_joy_1999 Major Dude Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: The box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the street from Jerry's bait Shop. You know the place. Posts: 669	ya you since its win 98 I have no answer ohter than the wires to the reset switch have a small piece of insulation missing and micro earthquakes (they happen all the time we just don't notice it) are causing the wires to touch causing the reset

17th May 2002, 06:06	#14
dirkdeftly Forum King Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Cydonia, Mars Posts: 2,651	Dells are pretty nice, tho. Oh, and did I mention that my modem, a 56K (which is usually decent enough to use) takes about 5 minutes to connect at around 31.6K. And whenever I restart my comp, it never remembers to save any passwords, preferences, or files that it got rid of when it froze (through autosave) "guilt is the cause of more disauders than history's most obscene marorders" --E. E. Cummings

17th May 2002, 06:19	#15
Atmo The Freak (Forum King) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 9,400	Dells are about the best of a bad bunch IMO....They do make some nice cases that make working on them nice and easy, snap out components etc. Other than being way overpriced theyre ok. :Psykotech:

17th May 2002, 07:00	#16
Kenny D. Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: SC Posts: 447	I think maybe you are blaming the computer when you should be blaming the OS or other software. I have nothing but praise for my Dell Dimension L866, but my Windows Me is another story. coolkenny - "You don`t waste time ; Time wastes you" LEAPIN LIZARDS \| PHASE - B \| Swampy \| ULTRA

17th May 2002, 08:47	#17
BMWboy Registered User Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: next the the guy that lives over there Posts: 1,360	he means that pre-built computers tend to use generic mother boards, and they are not getting the max performace out of the hardware. now, i don't buy pre-built computers, so i don't know if they all do that, but a good example is gateway. my mom is starting to devlop mild arthrtis in her knee, so it was getting painful for her to go upstairs to use the computer, so my dad built her a computer, and since she doesnt need that much, he got an 800Mhz AMD duron, but with a generic gateway motherboard. my dads PC is a 750 with a good motherboard they both have 256MB of PC133 Ram, and they both have only 7200 rpm harddrives. other than the cpu's and the mobos, they are almost identical. my dads machine(while slower on paper) benchmarks twice as fast as my moms machine(using nortons benchmark), mainly because of the mobo.

17th May 2002, 10:19	#18
zootm Forum King Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: the nether reaches of bonnie scotland Posts: 13,375	atero, as for your dell problem, try installing the latest DirectX (yes, i know more micro$oft is not whaqt you need right now...) - i used to have a computer game that would turn the volume all the way down when it quit... i think it may have been bitter.

17th May 2002, 18:28	#20
Vie Forum King Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Thoron fields and Duranium shadows. Posts: Crap mostly Posts: 8,003	My computer is a satanist every time I run a game on it it gose all slow and crapy but when my sister (who is worshiped by satan) uses it it runs way above spec! It is a very evil litt... "what are you doing Vie? I carnt let you do that Vie." Member most in need of SpellCheck Lifetime Achievement Award I'm a Twitch Streamer these days, it's weird.

17th May 2002, 19:13	#21
dirkdeftly Forum King Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Cydonia, Mars Posts: 2,651	Heh, then there's my dad, who breaks machines when he gets near them. Whenever he uses our computer, he's using it to print something - and something always goes wrong with the printer. "guilt is the cause of more disauders than history's most obscene marorders" --E. E. Cummings

17th May 2002, 19:42	#22
Omit Name mostly harmless Major Dude Join Date: Jun 2001 Posts: 1,809	2 to 3 weeks ago when i took a plain printscreen screenshot (600x800)and saved it as a png the file would end up being 100-150 in size (small enough for me to attatch it here without resizing.) but when i do the same now its five times that. when i was younger i would make electronics fail when i entered the room <--- true story

17th May 2002, 20:10	#23
BMWboy Registered User Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: next the the guy that lives over there Posts: 1,360	the only pre-built computer I'd get would be one from alienware. you can get god's own computer from those guys. http://www.alienware.com/

19th May 2002, 04:15	#25
Aero Zeppelin Major Dude Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: AjStone's Forums Posts: 928	My Dell sucks. Or maybe it's just Windows Me. When I first start up my PC, the system resources are always REALLY low, like 50%. Then, they get get so low that everything goes crazy and the screen blacks out and then comes back partially. It's hell. Does anyone know if I can install Win98 SE from an upgrade CD over WinMe? I am kind of worried that the video card might not work cuz it was specifically said to go with WinMe. Legalize It. Liberate It. Free The People of the United States. Free The Herbs Of The World!

19th May 2002, 04:36	#26
SSJ4 Gogitta Followed by Gnomes (Forum King) Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: West Virginia Googolplex: 10^10¹°° FB:/SSJ4.DominusDeus DeviantArt: DominusDeus XboX GT: A Wild Meeseeks Playstation 4: DominusDeus Posts: 7,162	good way to keep winamp from changing: first, set it exactlly how you want it, even the monitor position, skin, volume, shuffle/repeat.. all that stuff. brows to C:\Program Files\Winamp\ find the winamp.ini file, right click it and hit properties. now change it from archive to read only. Now no matter what someone does to winamp, after you close it and reopen it, it will be in the same window possition, volume level and all that as it was at the time you made the ini file read only.

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