Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Geek Forum |
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| Al-Basha |
| 01/11/01 at 03:02:14 |
| Salamu Aliakom, Any chance of getting a geek forum going? Specifically computer geeky stuff? Or better yet just make a general geek forum :) |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Ikani |
| 01/22/01 at 00:38:40 |
| Wa alaikum salaam, That would depend on what you mean by 'geek'. I like computers myself and believe one ought to be as educated as possible in their use especially as this is the information age, and since muslims go well with knowledge, that's power! Take the cool stuff and drop the nasty. Then again maybe you'd soon also get to fly around and run up walls in the Matrix. ;) |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Arsalan |
| 01/22/01 at 00:41:37 |
| How about something like a tutorial forum where people can come and get help on school work. Like if someone doesn't understand a certain concept (whether in biology, chemistry, computer science, etc), they can ask their fellow Madinites. And if someone can help - great! Whatcha think? |
| Re: Geek Forum2 |
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| Ikani |
| 01/22/01 at 00:57:04 |
| Not a bad idea! Might take up some space with some explanations, but then again it could lead to the brothers and sisters developing a site to take care of that! Now that you mentioned it, what exactly are IPOs? I keep mixing them up with ISPs. - Ikani http://www.geocities.com/iisule/inthemotionsofthewinds.html |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| jannah |
| 01/22/01 at 01:18:43 |
| Al-basha this is the geek forum! :) the media center! |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Al-Basha |
| 01/22/01 at 02:22:13 |
| Salamu Aliakom, This is the geek forum? Heh ok, well I guess I'll geek away then ;) Ikani, IPO stands for "Initial Public Offering" basically means that a company is officially on the stock exchange for the 1st time, on a specific date. This term is usually mixed with Computer stuff mainly because of the "success" of a lot of dotComs. Though recently stuff has been slowing down, and a lot of these dotComs have been laying off employees. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| bhaloo |
| 01/22/01 at 11:29:51 |
| slm Ok, I got this new system on friday and was trying to get it up and running but I had some problems with it and its been driving me nuts. I got this Duron 700mhz system, 64 megs ram, 20 gig drive, some cheap SIS 636 8 meg AGP graphics card. So I wanted to see how good the benchmarks were for the system so I went to the Wintune website (you can run benchmarks of your system there and then upload them to a database to compare with other people around the world). Anyways everything was really good on the benchmarks except for the graphics card. I happened to have a spare 3dfx PCI Voodo 3/2000 card lying around from my old pc and popped it in, and the benchmarks were much better. I was going to upgrade the memory, pop in a 128 meg module of DIMM 168 pin 133mhz ram from FRY's they had a special for $54, but im not sure, if i should get it or not because the system seems so fast even without this, so don't know. I played unreal tournament and it was pretty fast on that system with no real slowdown. Anyways, the harddrive started making a funny sound like it was having problems running and doing a scan disk said there were serious problems but then i ran the scan disk over night and it said everything was just fine. so maybe everything is fixed? I don't know, I'll play around with it later tonight to see if it works and is acting weird. I was thinking about formatting the drive and starting from scratch, what do you guys think? I hope the drive isn't bad. Cause I didn't install the software the place i bought it from did and who knows what those people did. |
| NS |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| BrKhalid |
| 01/22/01 at 13:02:48 |
| Asalaamu Alaikum :) Maybe this should be the Greek Forum cos it aint no language I understand ??? Computers were so easy when you had a Spectrum 48k :) |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| jannah |
| 01/22/01 at 15:11:36 |
| Arshad is it when you are doing something particular that the drive starts making sounds.. ie processing or writing to the disk? If it persists I'd call em up and tell them about it. If it sounds worse it's a sound of a dying hard drive believe me i know ;) If there's alot of junk that they put on the drive I'd start over, but as you know that's a last last resort.. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Asim |
| 01/23/01 at 17:07:54 |
| Assalaamu alaikum, If it sounds worse it's a sound of a dying hard drive believe me i know Yep, I've experienced that also. It is usually a fairly loud clicking sound caused by some mechanical failure (usually the heads) that damage the platters. If the sound occurs again tonight I would advice to have it replaced. Some drives do make light vibrating sounds in normal operation. However, you mentioned that scandisk discovered some problems so there must have been some platter damage. Check this out further. [quote]Anyways everything was really good on the benchmarks except for the graphics card. I happened to have a spare 3dfx PCI Voodo 3/2000 card lying around from my old pc and popped it in, and the benchmarks were much better.[/quote] Graphic cards performance double like every six months. I haven't heard about the sis 636. Also 8 mb is kinda small for game players. Is this an integrated graphic chip or a card that plugs into the AGP slot? Integrated solutions are not good for performance. These days the nVidia TNT2 cards are the top performers. However, I don't think they support 3dfx, only directx. But I guess almost all games are based on directx or openGL, no? (not a game player :)) [quote]I was going to upgrade the memory, pop in a 128 meg module of DIMM 168 pin 133mhz ram from FRY's they had a special for $54, but im not sure, if i should get it or not because the system seems so fast even without this, so don't know.[/quote] If you are using Windows 98/Me then 64 should be okay. You won't get any significant performance improvement by moving up to 128. However, I would advice new buyers to get at least 128 MB because OSes are becoming memory hogs. Duron has a 100 Mhz FSB so if you find cheaper 100 MHz SDRAM ($54 is hard to beat though) you can use that instead of 133 MHz. [quote]I was thinking about formatting the drive and starting from scratch, what do you guys think? I hope the drive isn't bad. Cause I didn't install the software the place i bought it from did and who knows what those people did. [/quote] They usually install a lot of junk software. Also, often they make only one big partition. I like multiple partitions so that I can format a single partition if need arises. This way data is more safer (it won't help though if the drive fails altogether!). But formatting and reintalling all the software can take a whole night :) Khalid, I also had a Spectrum! :) Wasalaam. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| bhaloo |
| 01/23/01 at 12:02:56 |
| slm I tried to format that drive and it had problems formatting it, it couldn't write out the FAT table. :( Looks like the drive is bad, I'll see if I can take the system back and get the drive changed. I may have voided the warranty by opening up the case. But I guess in the worse case scenario I can mail the drive back to Maxtor and they can send me a replacement one. What a hassle. Kashif, FRY's is a computer/electronics store, its a really huge warehouse type store. |
| NS |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Asim |
| 01/23/01 at 17:12:27 |
| wlm This is really unfortunate because hard drives don't go down that frequently. Does opening the case void the waranty? I doubt it. Anyway, Maxtor will exchange it without any questions. You will have to wait a week though for the new one to arrive. Wasalaam. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| bhaloo |
| 01/23/01 at 17:50:25 |
| slm I took the system to them and the guy said the warranty was voided because I opened the computer case. Aaaarrrgggghhh. That is so frustrating. Ok, so now I guess I will go the Maxtor route. I first have to run Maxtor's utility on my harddrive, and it will give me some error code that I enter into some online form. They have 2 options, either they can send me a drive after I return it, which will take a while, I guess a week as Asim said. Or I can have them send me a drive out the next business day (takes 2 days for delivery) and then I have 30 days to mail them back my old one. (I think I am going to go with this option). The whole thing is so annoying. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Ikani |
| 01/24/01 at 03:31:20 |
[quote] Ikani, IPO stands for "Initial Public Offering" basically means that a company is officially on the stock exchange for the 1st time, on a specific date. This term is usually mixed with Computer stuff mainly because of the "success" of a lot of dotComs. Though recently stuff has been slowing down, and a lot of these dotComs have been laying off employees. [/quote] Assalamu aleikum, Thanks for the explantion Al-Basha, been offline for a while 'cos a malaria parasite tried to assimilate my body system. We're relatively immune to malaria in Africa here, but man - the pain! Alhamdulillah, I'm feeling better now. :) |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| BrKhalid |
| 01/24/01 at 08:24:43 |
| Asalaamu Alaikum :) Could appreciate any help from the resident "geeks" :) I've tried running defragmentor recently and whilst the hard drive seems to whurr and buzz and bits fly around in the message window, it doesn't get passed 0% complete on the dialogue box even if I leave it running for quite a while. :( Symptoms of a sick hard drive or is the diagnosis more severe? [quote]Khalid, I also had a Spectrum! [/quote] Who could ever forget those rubber keys *nostalgic sigh* :) |
| my mounting computer problems |
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| bhaloo |
| 01/24/01 at 11:34:53 |
| slm ok, i bought a firewire/usb combo card and plugged it in. Win 98 second edition detected the card, and tried to install the usb driver and did so successfully. then it tried to install the firewire drive, it started to load the driver and then for some weird reason, the system rebooted. ok, i ran the utility from maxtor and it found no problems with the drive, even though while running their write test, it wrote to the drive, but near the beginning blocks it paused like it was having problems but then continued (as if it tried rewriting but had success the 2nd time). it doesn't seem to be consistent as to which cluster its having a problem writing to. anyone have any ideas what i should do now? |
| Re: my mounting computer problems |
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| Asim |
| 01/25/01 at 00:37:34 |
| slm [quote]ok, i ran the utility from maxtor and it found no problems with the drive, even though while running their write test, it wrote to the drive, but near the beginning blocks it paused like it was having problems but then continued (as if it tried rewriting but had success the 2nd time). it doesn't seem to be consistent as to which cluster its having a problem writing to. [/quote] Try low-level formatting the drive. The utility will allow you to do that (it is also known as writing zeros or something). This will reset the magnetic media of the drive. You can then format it with the format command. Create a system boot disk from a Windows 98 machine so that the format command understands the 32-bit FAT system. Before formatting though you may want to use fdisk to partition the drive (2 or 3 partitions should be okay) The voiding of the warranty is really bad. I would never buy a system with such a warranty. 'Coz one of the first things I do after I use a new computer is look inside it :) I've tried running defragmentor recently and whilst the hard drive seems to whurr and buzz and bits fly around in the message window, it doesn't get passed 0% complete on the dialogue box even if I leave it running for quite a while. Defragmentation can take a looong time (30+ minutes), especially if your drive is full. So be patient :) And I don't think there is any problems with the drive. Wasalaam. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| bhaloo |
| 01/25/01 at 10:51:00 |
| slm Since I was getting no where with the format command, I found that Maxtor has a utility for setting up harddrives. So I tried using it and it worked, it formatted the drive and installed the system files. Then I loaded windows 98 and that worked fine too. I didn't here any weird harddrive sounds. I don't get why its working now? One problem though during the installation was that I found out I have some VIA PCI audio card but I don't have the drivers. Anyone know where I can get the drivers? I also managed to find a spare maxtor drive that I had that was bad and is still under warranty. I connected it and went to go run the dianostic program but during bootup the system didn't detect the drive. I'm going to have to play arond with that. I'm still concerned about the firewire card and why it didn't install the driver, it might be that modem card in there conflicting, I don't know. Maybe I will delete my windows directory and install everything all over again to see if that works? |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Al-Basha |
| 01/25/01 at 20:10:26 |
| Salamu Aliakom, ahh good ol hardware problems, Bhaloo just return the drive to Maxtor and get them to ship you a new one, more than likely you were supplied a bad drive. In my experience if you format the drive, and you still have disk errors on it after reinstalling the OS then you have hardware problems. Though there is a possibility it could be your onboard HD controller, or maybe a loose interface connection. Definatly check those too. USB/Firewire combo? Ah i never buy combo cards, they always die on me. Your box doesn't come with USB onboard? Anyway, I'm getting sick of Windows and I think my next box is going to be a Macintosh insha Allah. Then I can just use my PC as a FreeBSD box and I'll get the best of both worlds. As far as games go, well X-box is coming out soon ;) |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Asim |
| 01/25/01 at 23:52:43 |
| slm Hmmm, I did not know that Via manufactured sound cards. Have you checked their site http://www.via.com.tw. Usually sound chips are integrated into the motherboard. In that case try checking the motherboard manufacturers website. Al-basha is right, I also avoid combo cards or integrated solutions. Again, try the manufacturers website to find an updated driver instead of relying on the one builit into windows. Wasalaam. |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| bhaloo |
| 01/26/01 at 00:13:04 |
| slm for some reason i thought there was a VIA audio pci card. as it turns out it was built into the motherboard, so the problem was solved as i had the motherboard cd. :) actually the combo card works fine in the new pc, it already had usb though. ok, i guess pretty much everything has settled down, and i can get back to things. i just tried the firewire out with a digital video camera. its actually pretty good, impressive. i captured about a gig of data and no problems now with the harddrive at all. actually before running the maxtor utility i had unplugged the drive and plugged it back in again, maybe that was the problem? loose connection? but everything seems to be working now. :) |
| Re: Geek Forum |
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| Asim |
| 01/26/01 at 00:25:04 |
| wlm Good to hear that everything is working fine. With computers there is always some loose end which when tied everything suddenly starts to work properly. I haven't tried firewire. It is supposed to have a huge bandwidth, 200 Mb/s ? Really cool for those who want to capture video. |
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