sumi, from three days ago:
Okay, my computer just did this thing -- where it went to blue screen and told me that if it was the first time this happened I should restart, but if it had happened before I needed to do something. The message said something about a "device driver."
1. What is a device driver?
2. Messages from microsoft tell me how to get to the device driver but I have no idea how to figure out which thing is the one I need to do something about -- is there somewhere to go to figure that out?
I haven't loaded any new hardware and I think that the latest program I downloaded was an update of McAfee. I'm running Windows XP.
Did you ever get any of this answered? Have you had further problems along these lines?
1. A device driver is the little piece of software that tells XP how to make all your devices (basically, every individual hardware component of your computer) operate properly.
2. One way to check which device might be having problems is to right click on My Computer and select Properties. Once the Properties window is open, click on the Hardware tab. On that tab, click on the Device Manager button.
This will produce an expandable list of your devices (meaning they'll all have plus signs next to them, which will expand a detailed sublist if you were to click on any of those plus signs). If there is a problem with one of your device drivers, one of the expandable items will be expanded, and the problem device will be noted with a (I *think*) question mark. Either that or an exclamation point. I misremember.
If nothing is expanded, that is, if you just se a simple list of devices (computer, disk drives, display adapters, DVD/CD ROM drives, etc...), you
probably
don't have a driver problem.
That's the best way I know to check for driver problems.
Ah, thank you!
And, no, nobody else answered my question.
And no question marks -- excellent.
I just read the Alaskan problem
ummm, lets just say that this is a common problem in emergency services. That's why no one gets fired . It happens far more often than it should.
why it even happens in software companies - people who bread and butter depends on maintaining their intellectual property
My Harmony is here. I feel a little ridiculous being this excited about a remote.
MS Word Technical Help Requested -- cross posted with LJ
WHY, in MS Word, in longish documents with many section and page breaks, does Word sometimes decide, on its own, that the section break (new page) that you really, really DO want, simply won't do. It will force, against your will, repeatedly, a section break (new page) turning into a section break (continuous )?
Meaning, you can't make the headers and footers and other such things exactly the way you want INSIDE THAT SECTION, and OMG it is SO SO SO annoying.
How do I force the section break (new page) to STAY there? Help? Please?
eta: it doesn't seem to be a style issue. Everything in that area is defined normal as I want normal style to be.
My Harmony is here. I feel a little ridiculous being this excited about a remote.
I can't wait to hear the report.
What little Word "expertise" I have does not extend to the mysteries of section breaks, alas.
Okay, Harmony report. Setup trickier than promised, remote MADE OF AWESOME.
We got the 670 from Amazon. It's the lower-end model of the two that are shaped vaguely like TiVo remotes; Logitech claims that you can control all of the same devices with any of their remotes, and I liked the button layout way better on this one than the 550. While I was waiting for it to get here, I installed the software and set up an account on their website to play around with their test drive -- look up my devices, set up possible activities, and suchlike. Fun!
So, once the thing got here, I plugged it in, fired up the setup account, and discovered problem 1:
1. If you haven't gone *all* the way through the dumbassed setup wizard, the site will keep dumping you at things like "continue where you left off your 'watch a videotape' activity" and there's NO way on earth short of a whole new account to make it cancel the wizard, go back to the beginning, start the setup over, or anything else of the sort. Which also means that if you've, say, fudged on some model numbers a week ago under the impression that "test drive" meant "dick around with the website to get a feel for the interface", you have to go through the whole setup with the wrong model numbers, just to get to where you can erase them and start over again with the correct toys.
Which led more or less directly to problem 2:
2. THE SHITTY SOFTWARE DOESN'T PLAY WITH MY MAC. It didn't give me any errors on install, but it just won't
do
anything. I reinstall from the CD. It doesn't do anything. I reinstall the latest from the website. It doesn't do anything. I uninstall again, carefully nuking all the stray preferences files. And reinstall. And every single reinstall asks me to reboot the computer, which just shouldn't be necessary at all. Please note, there appear to be all kinds of people out there who can work this thing just fine on a mac -- just not MY mac.
But luckily, plan B is sitting right there on the coffee table in the form of S's Windows laptop, which installs everything right nice, asks me to hook up the remote, recognizes it and does its woo-woo updatey thing so that I can get out of the setup wizard and into actually letting me set things up.
So I follow its suggestion to set up "activities" for stuff like watching a movie or playing a game. And this shit is the COOLEST THING EVER. Unlike previous universal remotes I've had, which let you, say, hit a "DVD" button and then use the play, pause, whatever buttons on the same remote to control the DVD player, this thing lets you hit one button to turn on the TV, switch it to the DVD input, turn on the DVD player, switch to widescreen, set up the sound system, dim the lights, buy you a drink, and try to cop a feel.
Only problem is, well, welcome to Problem 3.
3. My cheapass TV is in the database, sort of. That is, I looked up the model number, and it was there, and it passed all its little tests to make sure it was using the right infrared codes, yay. But when I tried to use any of those fancy actions, they just wouldn't fire. Hmm.
...
And then it was time to go to my shrink followed by a couple of beers, a large rare cheeseburger, and garlic fries. Which was the main reason it took me all night to write up a review.
...
Two hours later, back home and fortified with beer and fries, I notice that (a) the list of inputs I'm seeing in the setup software isn't at all like the ones my TV actually has and (b) it doesn't seem to think I have a button to switch between inputs at all. (Nor does it see a button to switch between widescreen and normal. Note that these are the two buttons I use the most, after On and Volume.) In other words, my cheapass off-brand TV is in the Harmony database, but linked to the remote layout from a slightly different (older? newer? swapped at birth by fairies?) model.
Now, my cheapass off-brand TV is lovely (and did I mention cheap, for an LCD), but nothing on earth plays with its remote. I've never gotten the TiVo remote to (continued...)
