Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Sheepherder]

5.1 speakers and stereo headphones.

There are 3 jacks outputting 6 channels on a 5.1 setup, one of which is the subwoofer.  There is 1 jack on a headphone.  The jack on the front panel, rather than outputting something appropriate for headphones, instead outputs the FR and FL channels from my 5.1 setup.  There are two workarounds, both of them require me to manually reconfigure my sound card often, ergo both of them suck.

[SnakeCharmer]

I see what you're saying.  Sounds like the simple solution is to just get a set of USB headphones and call it a day?  The Plantronics stuff has always been good to me, and their USB dongle has a built in sound card.

Or you could pop open your case and make sure your cases front headphone/mic jack wires are connected to the right pins.

[Sheepherder]

They are.  Intel's spec even says I'm not supposed to have jack sensing.

It's kind of retarded.  Two programs, one in stereo and one in 5.1?  Can do, if the program allows you to specify a sound device.  One program output in both stereo and 5.1?  That's crazy talk.

[Xilren's Twin]

So i know what what the problem with EA's drm activation program is.  It apparently uses the windows managment information WMI, and since mine is not properly reporting stuff like processoer make and type, it fails. i.e.


I have attempted Win7/Vista:
Command Prompt ' net stop winmgmt '
  then 'winmgmt /salvagerepository' without quotations.
net localgroup administrators NetworkService /ADD

The above command is supposed to rebuild the repository if it is corrupted and then restart the WMI service.
I also updated my BIOS, no change.

Any ideas on how to fix WMI?

[Lantyssa]

Does Windows need updated drivers for your motherboard?

It shouldn't, but maybe being in the bioware.ad.ea.com domain has an effect?

[Xilren's Twin]

Does Windows need updated drivers for your motherboard?

It shouldn't, but maybe being in the bioware.ad.ea.com domain has an effect?

Actually, thats not my pc it's just an example of the problem a bioware guy posted.

[Sheepherder]

I was wondering why you weren't sharing all of those delicious secret documents with us.

[Lantyssa]

So the Bioware/EA guys don't know how to fix it either?  And it's their downloader that's messed up by it?

[Chimpy]

My initial guess is that it is a chipset driver thing. Possibly lack of them being installed.

[JWIV]

Should've kept the AV30s and readjusted your ears to the way your music is supposed to sound like (I love my AV40s)

Which Bose did you have originally and which ones did you try to replace them with?

I still use my Bose MediaMate speakers as secondary speakers which were freakin expensive for computer speakers but have very good sound.

If you want 2.0 computers speakers and you don't want monitors have you listened to the Creative T40s?

Thanks for the recommendation of the AV's.  I missed out on the AV40's in the last woot-off, but I did go ahead and snag the AV30's to replace a shitty logitech 2.1 setup.  They sound absolutely fantastic. 

[Ingmar]

Not a question, really, but IE9 is out today for those of you who pay attention to such things.

The url is kind of  :

http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/download

[Salamok]

Anyone know what the latest and greatest in malware removal is for w7 64bit?

[Trippy]

Microsoft Security Essentials:

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx

[Salamok]

Microsoft Security Essentials:

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/default.aspx

Already has that running, looking more for removal not prevention.

[Chimpy]

MSE does removal.

If you are looking for a second "opinion", Malwarebytes is pretty good.

For trojans, I tend to use Stinger as it historically seemed to catch things that other larger suites sometimes miss.

[lamaros]

When I turned my laptop off last night it was working fine. When i turned it on today it is taking 10min to boot, can't access the second harddrive petition, and is unusably slow.

I am trying to go through all the usual virus etc steps, but it taking half a lifetime. Is it likely to be from that or could the hard drive has crapped itself?

Impossible to do work at the moment and really really annoying.

Is it perhaps a broken partition table or something like that?


Confirmed hd failure, getting a new one under warranty. Fun.
Yeah, second partition not showing in defrag (though showing but inaccessable in explorer)

[Chimpy]

Could be a lot of things. Since they are sending you a new drive finding the cause is somewhat moot.

Back up any important data you can now.

[lamaros]

Any free and easy way to try reclaim what was on the broken partition? I can't remember what I had on there and might regret it later.

[Sky]

Sledgehammer works wonders for crushing regrets. Not so good for recovering regrets to bask in later.

[Sheepherder]

Any free and easy way to try reclaim what was on the broken partition? I can't remember what I had on there and might regret it later.

I'd try plugging it into a desktop, assuming it has SATA connectors.  I know nothing about laptop drives though.

[Lantyssa]

You can try Drive Rescue 1.9d to see if the data is accessible at all.  There's probably something newer, but that's what I've used in the distant past.

[Engels]

The industry standard seems to be SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) Its $90 USD however.

[Sky]

I believe Drive Rescue has a limited trial. I forget how limited, probably too much for your purposes, but worth checking out.

[lamaros]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Just being able to see what is on there would be helpful, so a limited trial might be all I need.

[lamaros]

So they gave me a new hard drive. Installed with Windows 7 ultimate. Now the stupid thing is telling me the version of windows is not genuine, and after being dicked about on the phone for a while, it seems I cannot make it so without changing my version of windows back to home premium?

Should I care and bother to do this?

[Trippy]

So they gave me a new hard drive. Installed with Windows 7 ultimate. Now the stupid thing is telling me the version of windows is not genuine, and after being dicked about on the phone for a while, it seems I cannot make it so without changing my version of windows back to home premium?

Should I care and bother to do this?

Who were you talking to, Microsoft or the laptop manufacturer? Did you get a Windows 7 Ultimate key with the new drive?

[fuser]

Should I care and bother to do this?

If your still not genuine your OS will switch to a reduced functionality after a period of 30 days. It will trigger automatic logouts/shutdowns after one hour of being logged in so you really want to resolve it.

Trippy your quick!

[lamaros]

So they gave me a new hard drive. Installed with Windows 7 ultimate. Now the stupid thing is telling me the version of windows is not genuine, and after being dicked about on the phone for a while, it seems I cannot make it so without changing my version of windows back to home premium?

Should I care and bother to do this?

Who were you talking to, Microsoft or the laptop manufacturer? Did you get a Windows 7 Ultimate key with the new drive?

Nope, no key. Was talking to both of them at one time or the other. A useless and frustrating process.

All I have are my vista to windows 7 home premium upgrade disks, with the product key for that.

There is no "Windows activation" section in the system menu.

[Strazos]

You lost your ultimate key?

[lamaros]

Never had one. I don't know why the guy put ultimate on the hard drive. I only have a home premium key.

[Chimpy]

I thought Win7 activation was all based on the type of key you put in, not the actual installer... Oh wait, that is Server 2008 R2...nm.

You basically want to figure out how to get a copy of the proper install file, or see about upgrading your home premium to ultimate (not sure if that is even possible).

There is no "Windows activation" section in the system menu.

There should be a section at the bottom of the system contol panel with a link to "change product key", is that not there?

EDIT: Do you still have your original system restore disk and the upgrade disk for 7? Your quickest solution is probably going to be just nuking the Ultimate install from orbit and doing the install rather than fighting with MS and/or your computer manufacturer.

[lamaros]

There is no "Windows activation" section in the system menu.

There should be a section at the bottom of the system contol panel with a link to "change product key", is that not there?

EDIT: Do you still have your original system restore disk and the upgrade disk for 7? Your quickest solution is probably going to be just nuking the Ultimate install from orbit and doing the install rather than fighting with MS and/or your computer manufacturer.

Wasn't there all day. Checked again now and it is there. However slui.exe gives an application error when I try to change it. Progress of sorts... Might try a restart and see what happens.

Now I'm being told that because I only have an "upgrade" version of Windows 7 I can't even do this myself, but need Dell to do it for me. These idiots...

EDIT: Installed Home Premium from ugrade disks. All seems to be ok. Activated and etc.

[Yegolev]

I believe that the upgrade installer just has a check for an existing OS in it, but otherwise does a full installation.  It doesn't actually "upgrade" your OS.  But you figured it out.

[Yegolev]

Adobe Acrobat has to go.  Suggestions on a replacement?  I just need a viewer.

[Trippy]

I used Foxit for a while with reasonable results until I got a machine powerful enough to run Acrobat