Computer Woes

Cal Wright · Post by **Cal Wright** » 2004-02-20 03:20am

I reformatted my HD last night. I got the drivers installed. Had a devil of a time, because I didn't realize I was missing a disk. Either way. When I got my crapblaster sound card installed it fucked my vid card drivers. Then I got that taken care of. This bitch was like glass I tell ya. Then the moment of truth. Install Star Wars Galaxies. That just fucked up the harmonie that WAS a newly formatted HD.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2004-02-20 03:29am

Here's a trick with the SB drivers. Install the drives off of the MS CD first. THEN extract the contents of the driver installer from Creative to a dir via WinRAR. Then simply update the drivers and point it to that dir. Boom! Drivers, minus the bullshit software from Creative.

Cal Wright · Post by **Cal Wright** » 2004-02-20 10:24pm

That just confused the SHIT out of me.

Now, I've got an even bigger problem. My home page is the Dark Guard page, in my sig, and it comes up needing to download something. Then it pops an error window up saying can't do this, use windows update blah blah blah. When I go to windows update it says it failed due to reason a.b.c. One was if I was prompt I declined. Nope. Not that. Security settings. Nope, they're at low and are letting the world see my manhood. So what the fuck? Now messenger won't start. This is so fucked up. I don't see how a formatted drive with clean installs can do that so quickly. Damn. Wish I knew Linux.

darthdavid · Post by **darthdavid** » 2004-02-21 01:43am

Linux is relatively easy. I've used suse in the past and plan on using it again and found it no more difficult than windows. Just different. I've also heard that there are many much easier versions.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-02-21 01:53am

Vertigo1 wrote:Here's a trick with the SB drivers. Install the drives off of the MS CD first. THEN extract the contents of the driver installer from Creative to a dir via WinRAR. Then simply update the drivers and point it to that dir. Boom! Drivers, minus the bullshit software from Creative.

I've done that before, but for some reason it doesn't install EAX support when I do. Which is annoying since I like having EAX in Half-Life.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2004-02-21 02:08am

Cal Wright wrote:That just confused the SHIT out of me.

Now, I've got an even bigger problem. My home page is the Dark Guard page, in my sig, and it comes up needing to download something.

Ok, it sounds like you don't have a plugin installed. Probably either Java, Flash, or Shockwave.

Then it pops an error window up saying can't do this, use windows update blah blah blah. When I go to windows update it says it failed due to reason a.b.c.

Ok, could you by chance go into more detail than "it won't do this" because that tells us precicely jack shit. No offense Cal, but we aren't mind readers and I can't magically shove myself into my phone jack and appear on your end, wave my hand and make all your computer problems go away. You have to tell us things like what error message popped up. See, your leaving details out doesn't tell us what the issue is, and leaves us completely in the dark only to speculate and guess what your problem is.

Damn. Wish I knew Linux.

Download Mandrake Move and burn it to CD. You can just boot from the CD and use Linux without actually installing it.

Cal Wright · Post by **Cal Wright** » 2004-02-21 03:13am

Yeah, don't worry bout the error thing. That's what I post when I'm just pissed off at my computer and have no intentions of dealing with it. Seeing how it was just done last night. I reformatted the HD again after that post. So now, it was a clean install. I got the soundcard in just fine. I actually pulled the driver right off the website and it went in clean. Same with the vid card, and I got the new driver. The ethernet card went in just fine. Plus I did all my windows updates and I have media player on here. Everything so far seems fine. I guess Ill give Galaxies a try tomorrow. I was talking over with my friend who runs the guild and we think if there's any major problems like there's been, that it could be the CD. Either way. Thanks for the help guys. Thanks for the tips Vert. I'll probably grow some balls soon and try that linux route.

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2004-02-21 05:05am

Cal Wright wrote:Yeah, don't worry bout the error thing. That's what I post when I'm just pissed off at my computer and have no intentions of dealing with it. Seeing how it was just done last night. I reformatted the HD again after that post. So now, it was a clean install. I got the soundcard in just fine. I actually pulled the driver right off the website and it went in clean. Same with the vid card, and I got the new driver. The ethernet card went in just fine. Plus I did all my windows updates and I have media player on here. Everything so far seems fine. I guess Ill give Galaxies a try tomorrow. I was talking over with my friend who runs the guild and we think if there's any major problems like there's been, that it could be the CD. Either way. Thanks for the help guys. Thanks for the tips Vert. I'll probably grow some balls soon and try that linux route.

If you use Windows XP, try to make a restore point before you install any driver. This way you can roll back through the restores to see what gives you trouble.

There is another small distribution of Linux - Knoppix that you can use without installing. Just put it on a CD, boot and give it a try. It only uses the RAM and a small portion of the free space of the HDD for swap, but it does no changes to the file system.

Cal Wright · Post by **Cal Wright** » 2004-02-22 03:09am

Bitching. Oh, I forgot to mention, this is all Windows 98 SE.

Comosicus · Post by **Comosicus** » 2004-02-22 08:54am

Cal Wright wrote:Bitching. Oh, I forgot to mention, this is all Windows 98 SE.

I know the kind of troubles win 98 can give. I had to do a clean install almost avery 3 months or so.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-22 07:13pm

Vertigo1 wrote:Download Mandrake Move and burn it to CD. You can just boot from the CD and use Linux without actually installing it.

Bah, use Knoppix.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2004-02-23 04:36pm

phongn wrote:
Vertigo1 wrote:Download Mandrake Move and burn it to CD. You can just boot from the CD and use Linux without actually installing it.
Bah, use Knoppix.

Already got it burned to CD, and I ain't spending days downloading another damn ISO.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2004-02-23 04:38pm

If you think its the CD, pm me and I can probably arrange for a copy to arrive in your mailbox.

(as long as you live in the US or Canada)

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2004-02-24 08:08pm

Comosicus wrote:
Cal Wright wrote:Bitching. Oh, I forgot to mention, this is all Windows 98 SE.
I know the kind of troubles win 98 can give. I had to do a clean install almost avery 3 months or so.

I was careful enough about managing W98 that I only had to to clean reinstalls every 6 months, but it was still highly irritating.

As an aside, there's currently only one computer in the house that has only Windows 2K on it; all the others have either only Linux or dual-boot with Linux as the default