Pc Tech Support

[Muel]

Simple answer: Throw the wireless away, run a cable. You'll get better results, it's cheaper and it's more secure.

Long answer, provide information about the router/wireless access point he's using and the exact modal of the card.

BTW I doubt very much that the stick was overheating, never seen it happen. What kind of distance is he trying to run it over and what does the signal have to pass through?

Edited November 14, 2011 by Muel

[anzo]

Not concerning my computer so it's a bit difficult to explain and give info...

Problem: Every now and then my friends w-lan suddenly disconnects without a clear reason. Which can be terribly annoying for both when you'd like to play online with him.

- Up in his room his connection is on 2or 3 bars (out of 5).

- With no one else using his internet he gets disconnected after about 30 mins

- With his sister and his mom, both on sepperate computers he gets disconnected every 20 minutes.

- No one else gets disconnected.

- When he used to have a wlan stick he got disconnected every 10 mins because it would get too hot. He's now got somesort of Zyxel card.

- I have no ideas what kind of router they have and I've got no idea about it's settings.

- I've just got no idea where to start and he doesen't know much about computers.. (+ he doesen't want to spend any money, but he could wish something for xmas)

It would be very nice if someone knows the problem and can help us get rid of those disconnects!

Edit: Can't be that their bandwidth is fully used, can it? How can we check that?

I am assuming you have done a reboot of the router (power off for 30 seconds to 1 minute)??

Could be a number of things;

1. You say his Wi-Fi drops out, is it the router or the computer? Does anyone else computer in the household have the same issue?

2. Have you tested this with an Ethernet cable to the router, rather than wireless?

3. Is there anything that causes the issue which he knows of? Only on Games, streaming media....or any time without a known pattern?

4. Anti-virus all up to date on his PC?

5. Who is his internet provider (pure curiosity)?

6. Does he have any other devices near his router which could cause interference with the signal (for example mobile phones inc. wireless home phones, radios, baby monitor things)

7. Is the wiring to the router all sound, no cuts in cables, lose connectors?

8. Any warning lights/flashing lights/red lights on the router when this error occurs?

9. Make/Model of the router - find out, this could be a common problem depending on this?

10. When you say 'disconnecting' you mean disconnecting from the game or disconnecting from the internet? These are two different things completely, disconnecting from a game could mean a complete drop in internet connection OR not enough bandwidth to maintain a suitable connection - the game will attempt buffering for a while, however once this times out, the session will end).

11. Is he able to view streaming media with no issues (youtube)?

But yea, as Muel said - cable, cable, cable!

[Muel]

I has new server.

Intel Pentium D 2.8ghz dual core

2x1gb DDR2 533mhz RAM

Asus P5V-VM motherboard

Antec Sonata 2 case

Antec 450w PSU

At the moment all it has is a 120gb IDE HDD, useless as a file server but all I want it for at the moment is to run Apache2 and a Minecraft server. Once hard drive prices drop to their normal level I'll fill it with 2tb drives.

Spec isn't amazing, but I bought the case, motherboard, one stick of ram, CPU, PSU, a 7600GT and a soundcard for £50. All I've had to do to get it going is stick in my spare hard drive and the extra stick of RAM that I had kicking around.

Tis running very hot though, going to rebuild it, sort out the airflow and hoover all the dust out of it when I get chance. Got a posh CPU cooler on it as well.

[Topsy]

I am assuming you have done a reboot of the router (power off for 30 seconds to 1 minute)??

Could be a number of things;

1. You say his Wi-Fi drops out, is it the router or the computer? Does anyone else computer in the household have the same issue?

2. Have you tested this with an Ethernet cable to the router, rather than wireless?

3. Is there anything that causes the issue which he knows of? Only on Games, streaming media....or any time without a known pattern?

4. Anti-virus all up to date on his PC?

5. Who is his internet provider (pure curiosity)?

6. Does he have any other devices near his router which could cause interference with the signal (for example mobile phones inc. wireless home phones, radios, baby monitor things)

7. Is the wiring to the router all sound, no cuts in cables, lose connectors?

8. Any warning lights/flashing lights/red lights on the router when this error occurs?

9. Make/Model of the router - find out, this could be a common problem depending on this?

10. When you say 'disconnecting' you mean disconnecting from the game or disconnecting from the internet? These are two different things completely, disconnecting from a game could mean a complete drop in internet connection OR not enough bandwidth to maintain a suitable connection - the game will attempt buffering for a while, however once this times out, the session will end).

11. Is he able to view streaming media with no issues (youtube)?

But yea, as Muel said - cable, cable, cable!

1. I can't tell for sure. One thing might be that the router gets weaker sometimes and "throws him out" or his computer diconnects. No one else in the house has these issues, where as he's also the furthest away from the router.

2. He's going to buy a cable long enough this week to try that out. (I hope you can plug it in somewhere?)

3. Well, it's most noticeable with games. I made him stream youtube vids for an hour and he got the same problems.

4. Yes! He also gets those diconnects if he puts different (older) HDDs in.

5. No idea, but we anyways don't live in the uk

6. Not in his room. Ofcourse there are phones (mobile and wireless) spread around the house..

7. Not of which we know of! Could not check when I was around because his mom thought she needed to sit infront of facebook the whole evening. -.-

8. Could also not check on that, but I don't suppose to as it's only him?

9. Going to find that out asap.

10. Diconnecting from the internet.

11. no. 3

Thx!

[Luke Rainbird]

Finally got round to grabbing a graphics card for the computer, totally forgetting to check my PSU. No prises for guessing whether the required PCI connection is there

Considered grabbing a molex-pci cable, but think I might just take it as a good excuse to get something a little more beefy and upgrade the PSU while I'm at it I guess!

[dann2707]

Talking of graphics card, I think mines dying?

I've just been playing Skrim, settings were configured to High by the computer, the fan is spooling up at around 70% speed but im getting this awful smell of burning plastic ? HELP ME

[Luke Rainbird]

Lower the settings, see how it copes?

What card is it?

[weirdoku]

Talking of graphics card, I think mines dying?

I've just been playing Skrim, settings were configured to High by the computer, the fan is spooling up at around 70% speed but im getting this awful smell of burning plastic ? HELP ME

Dusty insides? Mines been pretty dusty before but never got that smell before. More dust causes higher temps, I would clean everything out and see from there.

[dann2707]

Yeah it could be dusty, my whole room is. I'll get some of that air in a can stuff and give it a whirl.

It's an ATI radeon HD 4850.

[Luke Rainbird]

Weird, I wouldn't have thought you'd have any real issues with it, though giving it a clean out and running it on slightly relaxed settings should help work out if it's anything fatal or just having to work hard I suppose.

Just ordered myself one of these. Should do the trick

[Muel]

Finally got round to grabbing a graphics card for the computer, totally forgetting to check my PSU. No prises for guessing whether the required PCI connection is there

Considered grabbing a molex-pci cable, but think I might just take it as a good excuse to get something a little more beefy and upgrade the PSU while I'm at it I guess!

Be fine, each of my cards require two 6 pins, my PSU only had 2 so I'm using two of these.

One of them should be fine for you. Might be an idea to connect them to different cables though if possible (if your PSU has two or more cable for molex).

Talking of graphics card, I think mines dying?

I've just been playing Skrim, settings were configured to High by the computer, the fan is spooling up at around 70% speed but im getting this awful smell of burning plastic ? HELP ME

If it's still working it should be fine, the smell could just be hot computer smell. As said, clean it out. I just use the hoover with the bristle attachment, I know you're not supposed to do that but I've been doing it since I started playing with computers (must have been about 1998).

Leave GPU-Z and speedfan open in the background to monitor the temps and see how close to the limits they're getting.

Just hoovered out my server and tidied all the cables up, it's too loud though. Need to find a way of quietening the CPU cooler.

[Luke Rainbird]

Nah, it's only a cheap PSU at the mo which has been perfect for what it's had to do, but now I'm starting to throw in more cards (and hopefully an SSD at some point when funds allow) the extra power and connections are only gonna be a good thing.

[Muel]

Ah excerrent.

Found a way of shutting my server up, fiddled some numbers in the BIOS so the CPU fan is super quiet until the CPU hits 50C now. Which it never does. Score.

[dann2707]

Had a gander at the computer and cleaned all the dust out. Was pretty dusty.

Now it's as clean as a whistle that's been polished.

[Luke Rainbird]

[Muel]

Jesus christ no wonder it was running hot! I've never seen that much before, even last summer when rebuilding my Granny's desktop, that she bought in 2001.

Shame on you Dan. I'm considering getting social services on you for that level of neglect. Does it sit on the floor by any chance?

[JD™]

I am most certainly not going to post a pic of the pc I use as a media server... I was looking at that thinking it didn't look too bad! Might have to get it sorted tonight...

[dann2707]

That was classed as bad?! Sorry sir

[JT!]

Haha I was gonna say, you lot should have seen my mother in-laws computer. It was stuffed.

[isitafox]

Right, trying to sort my sister in laws laptop out again. She keeps getting viruses which she puts down to her sisters memory sticks but I think it's more to do with the sticks from the school she works at, there's a lad who goes in from time to time to sort the computers and he keeps installing shite on it which I think is unnecessary. The current problem was everytime she was turning on internet explorer at home a virus notification kept popping up from windows security centre, I had a look at my house and it appeared IE worked fine and WSS had sorted the virus and said it needed a full scan to make sure the laptop was safe, I know this never ever gets done so I installed firefox to stop her using IE and said to plug it in and let it scan itself when she got home. The next day she took it into school where this lad has uninstalled WSS and stuck in Avast free antivirus, he's also previously installed ccleaner and malwarebytes anti malware stuff. The problem is now I cant install flash player from firefox cause of a script error but I also can't install it via IE or any other web browser as none will connect to the net despite me allowing them all through the firewall and turning the antivirus off. It looks like firefox is the only thing that can connect to the net, dropbox and apple software updater also won't connect, I'm thinking of advising her to do a clean install and start from scratch and tell her not to let the school computer lad near it as it always seems to cock up when he's touched it. Any ideas?? Baring inmind I've not used an antivirus programme for years other than the standard windows firewall and security centre and have never had a problem, even with that god awful xp virus that was doing the rounds last year.

Also from something he did everytime the laptop was started up it would say a vital file for the printer drivers was missing and even finding the correct one from HP's site and the installation disc itself it still wouldn't sort the problem though again since he had a mess the other day thats finally gone. Sorry for the longwinded story but I wanted to get all the info across, laptop is a Toshiba satellite pro c650 on w7 if that helps.

[weirdoku]

I'm thinking of advising her to do a clean install and start from scratch and tell her not to let the school computer lad near it as it always seems to cock up when he's touched it.

[Muel]

What he said. As a basic rule of thumb, ever get a virus, wipe it and start again.

[angua]

http://www.bestbuy.co.uk/product/1000163990/toshiba-l750d-14h-red-156-laptop---amd-dual-core-320gb-3gb-memory.aspx could someone tell me if I could hook that laptop to my tv by hdmi cable?

[wozz]

http://www.bestbuy.co.uk/product/1000163990/toshiba-l750d-14h-red-156-laptop---amd-dual-core-320gb-3gb-memory.aspx could someone tell me if I could hook that laptop to my tv by hdmi cable?

Yes =D

'If you’re keen to share your content with a bunch of other people (film nights with friends or showing your holiday photos to friends) you can quickly and easily connect your laptop to a large screen HDTV by using the laptop’s HMDI output and an HDMI cable'

[angua]

Yes =D

'If you’re keen to share your content with a bunch of other people (film nights with friends or showing your holiday photos to friends) you can quickly and easily connect your laptop to a large screen HDTV by using the laptop’s HMDI output and an HDMI cable'

Sounds good, thanks