Um, well, we listened to aggressively cheerful music sung by people chosen for their ability to dance. Then we ate cookie dough, and talked about boys.

Giles ,'Get It Done'


Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."

Got a question about technology? Ask it here. Discussion of hardware, software, TiVos, multi-region DVDs, Windows, Macs, LINUX, hand-helds, iPods, anything tech related. Better than any helpdesk!


tommyrot - Jul 30, 2014 8:28:55 am PDT #23962 of 25496
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

My iPhone 4S has been acting up with some weird memory issue. A month ago it reported that it had 0k free memory. I deleted a few gigs of apps and pictures but it still gave me error messages and reported 0k free when it should have over 9GB free. When I synced it with iTunes all the missing memory was reported as "other" or something like that. Restarting the phone had no effect so I wiped it and reinstalled everything, which freed up the memory.

It's still having the problem, though. Sometimes it'll lose a few GBs of memory every day until it's out. Sometimes it'll go a week without losing any memory at all, and occasionally it'll lose all 9GB of memory in about two hours.

Since I wiped it, restarting it now does free up the 9GB again. I deleted a an exercise app that tracks walking, and that slowed down the memory loss a lot. Playing music through iTunes music match seems to eat the memory pretty fast so I stopped doing that.

Any ideas? I've read that this can be due to having it back up to iCloud (which I'm doing) but I tried a fix for that (switching to a backup on the computer with iTunes, doing a back up and then switching back to an iCloud backup) and it didn't help.

Any ideas? At this point I'm thinking of getting the new iPhone when it comes out (if my current one lasts that long).


omnis_audis - Aug 01, 2014 3:29:09 pm PDT #23963 of 25496
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir

Long shot, can't hurt to ask. Here at work, a co-worker in the music dept has upgraded her Mac mini. For whatever reason, IT didn't take the old one, and doesn't want to (??). And for what ever reason, she accidently disposed of the external power supply. I don't suppose anyone has a power supply for a late 2006 Mac mini that they don't need anymore? Not sure how well the computer works, and it looks like a replacement is $50-110, and budgets aren't that big.


Jesse - Aug 02, 2014 11:43:45 am PDT #23964 of 25496
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

My parents' old, long-unused computer won't turn on. It's apparently plugged in fine, because there's a light in the back that is on. Googling suggests it needs a new CMOS battery. Does that sound right to you people? And is that actually something that is easy for me to do? My mother just wants to see if there are any files she wants to save before trashing it.


omnis_audis - Aug 02, 2014 12:56:07 pm PDT #23965 of 25496
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir

remove the hard drive. Buy an enclosure for it. Connect it to your new computer. Transfer files. Save hard drive. E-waste recylce the old computer.


Jesse - Aug 02, 2014 6:07:49 pm PDT #23966 of 25496
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

How easy is that to do? I am willing to try whatever, but have no experience in opening up computers.


Dana - Aug 03, 2014 6:04:50 am PDT #23967 of 25496
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.

It's not that hard, especially if you don't have to worry about breaking the computer.


Theodosia - Aug 03, 2014 9:03:45 am PDT #23968 of 25496
'we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon"

Jesse, it's the kind of thing that a local computer shop should be able to do while you wait. They'll have enclosures and the right kind of cables and software, and be able to copy it over onto a jump drive, most likely, right in front of you.


Jesse - Aug 03, 2014 11:20:00 am PDT #23969 of 25496
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

Thanks, guys!


meara - Aug 07, 2014 7:35:36 am PDT #23970 of 25496

Argh! What is going on and how do I fix it? My wifi is not working....sort of. It was being weird on my iPad and phone but after I tried turning it on and off, resetting the router, and "forgetting" the network once or twice, it's now working fine. But my Mac is still claiming that the wifi doesn't have an IP address or has a self-assigned one and can't connect to the Internet. Which is clearly false. What do I do to my computer to smack it upside the head?


meara - Aug 07, 2014 8:44:24 am PDT #23971 of 25496

Ugh. Fiddled with 18 billion different things google suggested (restart! delete this file! delete that file! type in this thing! hook it up via ethernet, then restart! etc etc), eventually futzed with some settings on my router and it suddenly worked fine...even when I then changed those settings back. WTF??