Archived CalgaryPuck Computer Help Thread

[Azure]

Originally Posted by InSutterWeTrust

ahh that makes sense, Thanks for the help Rico

Any specific reason you would want to upgrade your RAM?

[GoinAllTheWay]

Wondering if any of you have any suggestions for a good wireless router? I am looking for one that has a GOOD grahpical interface and is easy to set up encryption and access. Nice and fast would be good as well.

I have one of the old d-link wireless routers and for some reason, activating 128bit WPA encryption causes my g/f's machine to get the blue screen of death. REALLY screwing with it. I want to dump our current router and her wireless adapter for something new.

Not sure if it makes any difference but she will be getting an apple laptop in the near future and no idea if it is any different trying to lock it down but the router I'm looking for needs to work with both.

Also needs at least 4 hardpoints as well.

Thanks in advance!

[Juventus3]

I'd checkout the OT forum.

(Mod edit- moved to OT)

[llama64]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Wondering if any of you have any suggestions for a good wireless router? I am looking for one that has a GOOD grahpical interface and is easy to set up encryption and access. Nice and fast would be good as well.

I have one of the old d-link wireless routers and for some reason, activating 128bit WPA encryption causes my g/f's machine to get the blue screen of death. REALLY screwing with it. I want to dump our current router and her wireless adapter for something new.

Not sure if it makes any difference but she will be getting an apple laptop in the near future and no idea if it is any different trying to lock it down but the router I'm looking for needs to work with both.

Also needs at least 4 hardpoints as well.

Thanks in advance!

Some people swear by Netgear products, but I've always found them to be overpriced. That said, my last router was a d-link 624+ and it was absolutely BRUTAL. Despite this I gambled on a newer d-link and am having alot of success with it. However, do not get their USB adapter, it's reception is terrible. I replaced it with a PCI card and that works much nicer (only for desktops though).

I bought this, and would recommend it: D-Link RangeBooster N.
If you feel like spending money, try the D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Router.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by llama64

If you feel like spending money, try the D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit Router.

I just bought that last night. I use to have the lowest end Linksys and I was having problems (range/strength/staying connected). The router was on the second floor, the other computer was in the basement. I'll be doing something similar this weekend, so I guess I'll see how it works out.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by InSutterWeTrust

ahh that makes sense, Thanks for the help Rico

To explain the price difference, it's supply and demand. All the factories are moved over to produce the new kind of ram, therefore there are abundant supplies of that (and they are cheaper in the first place due to newer technologies, certain economic things in the industry). The older ram was more expensive to begin with and there are lower supplies and still demand for them so it's much more expensive.

I felt that pain upgrading my home computer from 1GB to 2GB ram. I spent $300 on 2GB of DDR when 2GB of DDR-2 would only have costed around $90.

[Mccree]

I have a laptop that I need to install win 98 on

I am using Virutal PC 2007 but I do not have a floppy drive?

is there a way to make a bootble CD or us a USB key thingy?

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Mccree

I have a laptop that I need to install win 98 on

I am using Virutal PC 2007 but I do not have a floppy drive?

is there a way to make a bootble CD or us a USB key thingy?

Can you expand on this a bit more?
You can make bootable CD's and USB devices, but it may not be what you are after.

If you are using Virtual PC, your instance of Win98 should run on top of whatever OS you are currently running on your laptop. This is different then dual booting, which would require booting off a seperate device, such as a CD.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Issue:

Whenever I try to connect to xbox live, I promptly get booted off and my router powers down and re-starts.

Router:

D-Link DI-624 (Rev C Firmware Version 2.76)

Any idea what would cause this? I have looked at the page on Xbox.com that shows all compatible routers and mine is listed. My only concern is that my version of Firmware is 2.76 while the highest listed on that site (xbox.com/techsupport) for being compatible is 2.7. I'm not sure that makes any difference. I COULD roll back my firmware as I have finally found an older version but would have to roll all the way back to 2.56 or something like that.

Now, when I was talking to one of the D-Link Tech Support reps (whom had a heavy accent so not sure if he was getting everything I was saying) and he said port forwarding may not be properly set up for xbox live. My only two concerns with this are 1) I have never needed to open ports on my router to get any online game/device to work and 2) If port forwarding was not setup up properly, would that cause a router to shutdown and restart? That seems odd to me and I could very well be wrong but if the ports are not setup properly, wouldn't that just decline the connection as opposed to making a router re-start?

Now assuming the issue is port forwarding, it seems pretty straight forward but I would have to instruct my router to assign a Static IP address to my xbox, yes?

Now I realize I can plug my xbox straight into the modem and that will make it work (I have tried) but this isn't a good solution for me and not practical either as that would make email/internet unavailable to anyone whilst I'm jamming away on Xbox.

Any thoughts?

[llama64]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Issue:

Whenever I try to connect to xbox live, I promptly get booted off and my router powers down and re-starts.

Router:

D-Link DI-624 (Rev C Firmware Version 2.76)

Any idea what would cause this? I have looked at the page on Xbox.com that shows all compatible routers and mine is listed. My only concern is that my version of Firmware is 2.76 while the highest listed on that site (xbox.com/techsupport) for being compatible is 2.7. I'm not sure that makes any difference. I COULD roll back my firmware as I have finally found an older version but would have to roll all the way back to 2.56 or something like that.

Now, when I was talking to one of the D-Link Tech Support reps (whom had a heavy accent so not sure if he was getting everything I was saying) and he said port forwarding may not be properly set up for xbox live. My only two concerns with this are 1) I have never needed to open ports on my router to get any online game/device to work and 2) If port forwarding was not setup up properly, would that cause a router to shutdown and restart? That seems odd to me and I could very well be wrong but if the ports are not setup properly, wouldn't that just decline the connection as opposed to making a router re-start?

Now assuming the issue is port forwarding, it seems pretty straight forward but I would have to instruct my router to assign a Static IP address to my xbox, yes?

Now I realize I can plug my xbox straight into the modem and that will make it work (I have tried) but this isn't a good solution for me and not practical either as that would make email/internet unavailable to anyone whilst I'm jamming away on Xbox.

Any thoughts?

Solution, get a new router. Seriously. I had that router, it has a bug in it that DLink never fixed that causes it to reboot constantly when something interferes on the radio channel it's using. You could try setting it to use a set radio channel rather then auto, but I still encountered the same problem.

It also reboots if it gets overloaded by the amount of data flowing through it. Whenever I streamed music or video, it was a crap shoot whether it rebooted or not.

I recommened a pretty good router above if you want to take a look at it.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Burninator

I just bought that last night. I use to have the lowest end Linksys and I was having problems (range/strength/staying connected). The router was on the second floor, the other computer was in the basement. I'll be doing something similar this weekend, so I guess I'll see how it works out.

Yeah this router didn't work out too well. Had to return it to Best Buy the other day. Something was wrong with it. It kept losing the connection on the wired computer. To make sure it wasn't the wires I tried another router that I had, and it worked fine. Infact it worked better on our wireless laptop. So I would give my review on this router but I got a faulty one, so I can't really comment.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by llama64

Solution, get a new router. Seriously. I had that router, it has a bug in it that DLink never fixed that causes it to reboot constantly when something interferes on the radio channel it's using. You could try setting it to use a set radio channel rather then auto, but I still encountered the same problem.

It also reboots if it gets overloaded by the amount of data flowing through it. Whenever I streamed music or video, it was a crap shoot whether it rebooted or not.

I recommened a pretty good router above if you want to take a look at it.

I do intend to buy a new router and most likely the one you mentioned, it seems pretty solid. Will wait till my g/f get her new laptop though

Until then I actualy did manage to fix the problem, I just rolled the firmware back to 2.7 (finnaly found this version after much searching) and it all works like a charm now, even having an easier time with the wireless connection.

[Mccree]

Originally Posted by llama64

Can you expand on this a bit more?
You can make bootable CD's and USB devices, but it may not be what you are after.

If you are using Virtual PC, your instance of Win98 should run on top of whatever OS you are currently running on your laptop. This is different then dual booting, which would require booting off a seperate device, such as a CD.

My laptop only had a DVD drive an I need to be able to run xp and win 98 at the same time. I have done this on my PC but my PC has a floppy drive whereas my laptop does not.

How do I make a bootable CD?

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Mccree

My laptop only had a DVD drive an I need to be able to run xp and win 98 at the same time. I have done this on my PC but my PC has a floppy drive whereas my laptop does not.

How do I make a bootable CD?

Most CD burning software applications give the option to create a bootable CD. You could try reading this page: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/75

Do you use the floppy to boot up Win98, even if it's on your hard drive? You can add an installation of Win98 to the WinXP bootloader.

That said, you'll probably have more luck either: a) dual booting off the same HDD or b) using a virtual machine such as Virtual PC.

Use Partition Magic to repartition your hard drive if you are going to dual boot.

[Mccree]

Originally Posted by llama64

Most CD burning software applications give the option to create a bootable CD. You could try reading this page: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/75

Do you use the floppy to boot up Win98, even if it's on your hard drive? You can add an installation of Win98 to the WinXP bootloader.

That said, you'll probably have more luck either: a) dual booting off the same HDD or b) using a virtual machine such as Virtual PC.

Use Partition Magic to repartition your hard drive if you are going to dual boot.

Thanks again. I want to do b) using a virtual machine such as Virtual PC but I do not know how to load win 98 on the virtual pc without a floppy drive. I know how to do it with a floppy but the win98 cd have is not a bootable one.

I think making a bootable cd will work and will try your link

[arsenal]

So I have a question for all you guru's.
I downloaded and installed partition magic 8 demo, so I could repartition my 2nd partition (d) on my hard drive. Going to try a dual boot of Vista/MacOS first. If that doesnt work, then I will go Ubuntu.

Anyway.. after i installed PM8 and tried running it, it was telling me that some drive stuff was wrong so I let PM fix it. Big mistake. It has removed the drive letter from my second partition, so now vista doesn't think that it exists. It shows up in my disk management as being there, just it doesn't have a letter assigned to is, so none of the programs or anything that I have installed on that drive are showing up.

Not a big deal, as I have installed all the system specific stuff on my primary partition (c) so my computer is still usable. So really, all I have lost is all my data and a few programs that I can easily re-install if required. But I would like to know if anyone knows of how to get my drive back before I go ahead and do this.

Thanks.

[Bobblehead]

Partition Magic is voodoo.

Or a better analogy is using Partition Magic is like juggling fine china. If everything goes well it is pretty impressive. But if something goes wrong it will probably make a heck of a mess that can't really be recovered.

My guess is that partition is FUBAR

[arsenal]

so if it is fubar, is there a way to tell vista that it actually exists so I can get the drive back? I imagine I will have to format it though correct?

Or am I looking at a total re-install?

[photon]

If it shows up in the drive manager but without a drive letter, just assign a drive letter to it and see if you can read it. (Right click My Computer, Manage, and the Drive Manager is in there to assign letters).

[arsenal]

wont let me. everytime I try to do that, it says that the table is not up to date, and asks me to refresh the listing page.
I do that, and I try assign the letter to the drive again, and i get the same message again.