Ok, yeah, that makes sense, because I don't think I've done that defragmenting thing since my very first Mac, back in 1995 or so... When you mentioned it, I was thinking, "Oh crap! I probably should have been doing that all along!" I'm relieved to hear it isn't really necessary. I'm running OSX 10.4.8, so I think I'm good. I'm just going to shut down, hopefully when I start up tomorrow, my computer will be performing like a rock star, what with that gazillion trillion GB of memory I added and the approx. 8MB free disk space I have now! I'm hoping that these relatively low cost "upgrades" will keep me happy, cause I won't be able to buy that Intel Mac I'm coveting until AFTER my wedding next summer...

Thanks for the help guys. I didn't even know this thread existed until today - I came here planning to whine in Natter until someone took pity on me. It's so nice to have this thread here, filled with Buffista Techno Geeks (I hope you understand that is NOT derogatory, in my mind your right up there with Superman...) that I trust not to lead me askew. I am sure I'll be back. I don't have lots of time to chat these days, but I've always got some sort of computer issue or I'm looking for someone to geek out with after learning about some new must have gadget. I'm a budding computer geek - I ask stupid questions, but I usually remember things once I learn them. And looking at the specs for some great new piece of equipment (such as the aforementioned Intel Mac) makes me salivate, and that's one of the primary requirements to geekdom, right?

Shutting up now. Night.

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I have a mystery question. An innocuous blog has been crashing my browser (IE, XP) for a couple of days now. For a while, there was an error message, something C++ Visual Library or something...

Runtime Error!
Program: C:Program FilesInternet Exploreriexplore.exe.
R6025 - pure virtual function call

Microsoft suggested I install updates and check brower add-ons. So I did the updates and disabled the one weird-looking IE add-on. I ran Norton AntiVirus, Ad-Alert and Spybot, and no help. Googling suggests it's a problem with the site, but it worked fine from my work computer. Any other ideas of places to look for the problem?

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Have you seen this? [link]

They recommend this:

More searching lead me to this Usenet post where one of Microsoft’s MVPs explained three things that lead IE to crash, and that one of them can be any of BHOs installed. BHO stands for Browser Helper Object - things like Google toolbar. The man recommends:

1. open Tools / Internet Options, Advanced tab

2. uncheck “enable third party browser extensions” - this will turn off all BHOs

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I'd rather not turn everything off, though. Hmph. I guess I'll do the one-at-a-time turn everything off troubleshooting method.

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I think I fixed it, but I'm not sure how/why. Ah well. All's well that ends well?

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I need a 5.25" double density USB floppy drive. Although I suppose such a thing does not exits.

Let's see - can I take a 15 year old 5.25" double density (not high-density) floppy drive and stick it in a modern PC, using the built-in floppy controller?

eta: Oh, and access the drive with Linux?

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Let's see - can I take a 15 year old 5.25" double density (not high-density) floppy drive and stick it in a modern PC, using the built-in floppy controller?

You'll need a ribbon cable with the old-style connector (card connector instead of pins) on the drive end of the cable. Also, high density floppy drives could still read double density disks, couldn't they?

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Also, high density floppy drives could still read double density disks, couldn't they?

Yes. Writing to a double-density disk with a high-density drive is problematic, but I just need to read stuff. However, I don't have any high-density 5.25" drives.

I'll have to see what floppy cables I have.

I also found a service that'll copy info off of 5.25" floppies - at $5 per floppy. Je-sus.

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If you're not in a hurry, I could do it for you. I still have a 5 1/4 drive in one of my work computers. I charge much less than $5 a disk. :)

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Anyone ever use Parallels Desktop for Mac? It lets you create and run virtual computers while running OS X. So you could run XP and OS X at the same time (with XP running at 70% of its native speed).

Currently I'm installing FreeDOS in a virtual machine. There's something cool and geeky about having to parition and format a virtual drive on a virtual computer....

Anyway, I'm gonna install Windows 2000 and/or XP once I upgrade the memory of this puppy.

Oh, you need an Intel Mac to do this....

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