I've periodically had the problem where my computer (Dell XPS Gen 4, just over a year old) wouldn't boot into WinXP but shutting down and rebooting usually does the trick. Within the past few weeks, I've also been getting from time to time a message (next time, I'll have to note the specifics) that the hard drive can't be detected, but rebooting also works.

I don't know the inner workings of a computer too well, so I'm wondering if a connection is loose (I took a quick peek in the case but nothing looked obvious.) or if something's not quite right with the drive. Any ideas?

Rumors are that the new "Macbook" (Intel-based iBook) is coming out on Tuesday....

[link]

I wish I could come up with an answer for you Hidden Sky, but there are so many things I can think of. Could be a controller problem (that would need a new motherboard to fix), could be a hard drive problem, could be a power problem, could be a memory problem (not likely if your computer runs smoothly after getting it to boot), and could be a software problem depending on exactly what the errors are. I can't really diagnose what it is from the description. You might have documentation about clearing the CMOS (or maybe they say clearing the BIOS) in the manual that came with the computer, that might be worth a try before anything else.

Our client needs a web thingie:

Let's say we have a table on MS SQL Server. They want to give users the ability to

• Select various fields from the table
• Select fields to sort the table on
• Put "filter" criteria on various fields
• And then print a report based on the table and their above selections.

They don't have the budget for us to develope this from scratch, so I'm wondering if there's any preexisting product out there that could do all this....

All their users are on IE6, with the .Net framework installed as well.

This sounds like something a standard report writer or query builder could do. The reporting part of this sounds simple enough that a query tool rather than a reporting one might be the best bets.

Name brand in reporting software is Crystal Reports and that awful MS-SQL thing. Name brand in query - I really don't remember, but Stonefield is one know name.

Because you want full web integration you will have to shop very carefully - since you don't just to run the reports on the web, but have people design their queries completely from scratch on the web. If that were not a requirement, if you would not mind giving each user a small reporting client program over and above their browser, and everyone was on the same LAN you could do this really simply and cheaply. But even with your requirements you can probably find something. You just need a simple graphical query tool or Query by Example query tool with full web integration.

A quick google under "web database query tool" included this result [link]

which is a free PHP browser based querying interface.

Hey there, technophiles!

So I downloaded the Videora (iirc) iPod thingummy onto my laptop, and have successfully reformated 4 vids so that I can put them onto my iPod. This is a source of great joy.

However, for some reason I'm not able to reformat 6 or 7 other vids. And I'm not quite sure why that would be. The 4 that would reformat are not all the same flavour of file, so it's not just that, I think.

Any ideas?

Can you tell us what flavors of file would and wouldn't convert?

A brief glance at the webforums tells me I might have some ideas - the application Videora uses to actually do the conversion is a program called ffmpeg that i'm familiar with. For example, I know ffmpeg can't handle recent WMV files.

ETA: [link] <-- the FAQ for Videora. Suggests installing a scripting program called AVISynth to make certain types of files work. Tells you how to use it on the next question. Try that?

ETA2: If you can't make this guy work, there seem to be a couple of pay solutions out there that you can download trials of. M2Convert seems like a promising one. It's $30.

Help!

I have an old IBM ThinkPad that was my dad's. I only ever use it plugged in because the battery's bad, and I just used it yesterday. Shut it down properly, unplugged it, put it away. Just plugged it and turned it on and I'm getting a black screen with the message:

ERROR 0271: Check date and time settings Press F1 to Setup

When I do that, though, I don't where to go from there. And I have no idea why is this happening. Any hints?