Crimson Red Sports

I can hear them "grinding" slightly (for just a second) in the laptop startup. Does that mean castastrophic failure on my e-horizon?

YES!!!! BACKUP WHAT YOU CAN NOW!!!

Any abnormal noise from the hard drive is a sure fire sign of impending doom.

I have a portable hard drive. I am under the impression I can stream that saved data and files to a new laptop to get back in business?

Yes, copy everything important over to the portable drive ASAP.

By the way, I would not turn the computer off or reboot it before you get your files copied over.  It might not come back up.

Thank you.

(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJa8YLMCBg08NQTYbqXnWpsPb-p-qyAII4ki4TlNqnwOSnEABwzA)

Wow! I hope everythiing went OK for you BamaWV. RTR!

The bearings grinding laptop hung in there until a couple weeks ago. But the problem is maybe something to do with powering up, instead. I get power light and battery charge light flickers but blank (black) screen. The icon that shows your PC is locked lights up-- so with my limited knowledge I ruled out HD crash. I think it needs a jump start.

I unplugged, removed battery, took out memory card, and then hard drive. Then I replaced in reverse order. But that is all, ---any suggestions?

Best Buy has a good selection of new ones. That were it sounds like you are headed to me.  :(

A few days ago I gave the "3 kids in college now" and "we'll have to get used to last years fashions" and "hand-me-down stuff will have to make do" speech. I have a desk top and 2 notebooks on my desk for work. The problem laptop was/is my personal toy. I will have something nice before football season, but in the mean time, I need to feign frugality.  I've painted myself in a corner, but still think my problem is something electical. I know the battery is cooked. It would not take a charge before things went all to hell, --but I hate to buy a new battery just to test it in the process of elimination.

Three in college. I feel for you. I have one in college and a senior in high school. Cars, insurance, prom/formal dresses (2 girls), etc is killing me. Not to mention college costs.

I know this isn't computer related, but seeing you guys talk about college-age kids takes me back a little. I supposed for sometime that I was among the older guys on here (at 36), but it looks like I must be one of the young'uns. Can I help any of you old dudes with your walkers or anything?  :P :P :P :P :D :D :D :D  Just kidding, of course.

OK you young punk. We don't need walkers but you can bring me my reading glasses.  ;D

 #+ :lol:

It is most likely power related if it won't even come on.  It sounds like it isn't even getting to the part where it checks to see if the hard drive is there.

It should work just fine with a bad battery as long as you have it plugged into the wall.  I wouldn't waste money on a battery.  Typically by the time the battery goes out you can buy a new low end laptop (by today's standards) that is not much more than a battery, but is probably quite a bit faster than the old laptop.

Do you have it plugged up to an external monitor?  If so, unplug it from the monitor and open the lid to see the screen.  When you turn it on like that, do you see anything at all come on the built in screen?  Do you hear any sort of beeps coming from it?

Totally black screen. No beeps. Yeah, it won't even boot up to the F1 or F11 question-- just blank/black screen. I had a problem with the power cord connect prior to stopping altogether. You sometimes had to twist the jack in the outlet on laptop to get power. But the power LED and battery charge lights up as well as the "laptop locked" LED.

Hmmm... it sounds like a bad solder connection on the power connector internally.  It could be trickling in enough to run those LEDs (which use almost nothing), but not enough for it to come on.  Try removing the battery and turning it on with the battery out of it.  Other than that, you will probably need to take it apart and investigate the area where you connect the power cable.

It could also be a bad power cable.

Sorry. No, I tried a couple with same result. But led lights are on so it must be getting some power. W/O knowing what I'm talking about, I'd bet an intermittant short on the power inlet. Maybe caused by the intermittent short that I have been remedying by twisting the power cord. NOT WORTH MUCH EFFORT-- i GUESS i WAS HOPING SOMEONE KNEW A FUNCTION KEY THAT would magically get it back. Any ideas are appreciated. TIA.

Cool. Thanks.

I am using an RGB cable and watching screen on TV--I have to keep scrolling over each time I change screens- I was complaining and Smitty said you may know how to remedy that?

Well, I'm not sure I understand.  You have your TV connected to the computer through an RGB component cable?  This is the one with a red, green, and blue connector, not the yellow, red, and white.

Also, is it an HDTV?

Yes and yes. First, the computer image on TV is way smaller than the 47" TV. Next when I change screens I must scroll over to center the page. Maybe Smity misunderstood  but he saaid you knew how to fix it?

My bad red,yellow, whiite

I'm happy to help.  Can you clarify that part for me?  Are you referring to changing the display settings in Windows?

With a red, yellow, and white connection on the TV your resolution will be horrible, even if it is an HDTV.  This low resolution doesn't give the computer a lot of room to draw the screen, hence the scrolling problem.  This assumes I am understanding the problem correctly.

Do you have any other options to connect the computer to the TV with?  An HDMI cable would probably be the easiest if both the computer and TV support it.  Some newer TVs also have an old style DB15 monitor port that you should be able to use, which would also give you the full resolution.

When I just clicked on quote it changed to reply creen. I had to scroll over to center the reply box (and scroll down to see emoticon)-- is their a way to eliminate the scrolling over since I have to do it 500 times a day?

I'll look see later SC. 85 degrees in here- someone swiped my office fan so the sweat off my forehead keeps making my reading glasses slide off my face. Thanks-- I'll check the book.

I see.  I can't think of anything easy for that.  The basic problem is the whole site is designed for a minimum of 1024 pixels wide, which shouldn't be a problem for any computer released in the last 15 years or more.  However the connection you have to the TV is an old analog connection, so you aren't getting a high def connection.  My guess is that pretty much anything you do with that setup is like looking at the world through a peep hole.

I still get a 30" picture on a 47" screen.

What brand/model TV is it?

My Dell computer is 7 years old. I was told my Maind Hard Drive is going down. So I gotta get a new one. RTR!

Who told you that Ricky?

This guy that works on my computer all time. He is the Pastor I am associate under. He has it now and is working on it. RTR!

Well in that case he should be trustworthy.

Let me give you the best idea I can. I had pages so slow it was painful, lol. My computer was 7 years old. A few months back it was lightning fast but had gotten very slow. When had a link here on my home site, like BR or al.com it was just sitting there. It had 34 GB on the computer and I have 7 family photos and it said I only had like 4.1 GB left we or he could not find out what was going on. He said he thought the Hard Drive was going out. If you have any suggestions I would gladly give you his number. Thanks, RTR!

Bought a Toshiba Satellite. This is the nicest, most fast, machine I have ever seen.

That sounds nice. Which one of the kids dropped out of school?  :)

I have owned a couple of those.  They are nice.

Any tips,-- things you do when setting a new one up?

Get the Symatic ghost software. Make a copy of your files on your hard drive. That way you can always get back to a starting point if you have problems later.

The first thing I do is wipe out the whole thing and install the operating system myself.  This gets rid of all the crap they put on there.  But I would not recommend a normal person doing that.

 PC Decrapifier is a free  program, and it cleans alot of the crap that comes on a new comuter

Hear, hear!  I hate all the junk they install on a new PC.  I also repartition the HDD and put the OS on its own partition that I can easily format and place a clean install on about once a year.

BTW, I've owned a couple Satellites as well.  The last time I looked 2-3 years ago, Toshiba had the highest reliability ratings of any major laptop.

My first Satellite is about 14 years old and still runs fine.  Of course it is too slow to do anything serious with it, but the quality of the machine is solid.

My second Satellite is about 8 years old.  It didn't hold up as well.  The hinge on the display is broken, and I had to 2 different hard drive failures.  Right now it still has the second bad hard drive in it.  I suspect there is probably a cooling design issue in the chasis area where the hard drive is located and it was just getting too hot in there.  I would have replaced the hard drive again if the hinge hadn't broke.  It was about 4 or 5 years old when the hinge broke, so it was already decommissioned by then.

So I guess I got my money's worth out of both of them.

Yeah, I don't know which programs to can and which I'll need or later want. Any big speed killer, mega byte programs come to mind that I should or could delete?

Did it come with a system restore disc?

No sir.

No sir. Already installed and I have created a restore point.

Did it come with ANY discs at all?

I bought a Norton Security extension

If you don't have any sort of system restore disc or operating system disc you are flying without a parachute.  I wouldn't mess with anything.  If you screw something up you won't have any way to fix it back.

I know it's almost 1am so tell me if I'm keeping you. I keep getting images with just an "X". Some I can get the address and open--others I cannot, for various reasons. But there is some block I haven't seen before--any ideas?

Pictures on this site but also in some emails?

That is odd.  Especially for a brand new computer.  Have you been fiddling with stuff?

You know me--what do you think? Of course, but I don't recall doing anything with parental blocks or security in general. Also if you rgt. click and select show picture, that does nothing. I've also tried that and held ctrl+alt-- no luck.

I thought of something last night after I went to bed.  Is it possible that your internet connection was having issues?  A lot of times when that happens the browser will get the text for the page but will time out before it can get all of the pictures.

Try going to www.speedtest.net (http://www.speedtest.net) and see how fast your connection is.  I do this any time I suspect my connection is having issues.

I keep getting kicked off the internet (lol). Seriously, the broadband has been going out for up few minutes, then back. I lose connectivity for a few minutes only. I haven't checked with others around town, but it is happening on all our PCs. It went off several times last night. It just happened again today. Crappy broadband? I use Frontier as an IP.  Possible that modem/router is going out? The modem is the phone company's free with broadband, but I have another (brand new) router I can change. I just hate to do it on ball game Saturday.

The picture (X) issue resolved itself so I'll bet you nailed it. BTW, my speed test showed: Ping 105ms   DLSpeed 1.52 Mbps  ULSpeed 0.26Mbps

Is that Good Medium Bad?  (^^^see my post, previous page^^^)

My connection is not very reliable when it rains, but I can connect through my cell phone as a backup router.

That is pretty bad for 2011.  But it might be the server that speedtest.net picked for you.  They pick the closest one to you geographically, but that usually has very little to do with the speed since there is so much variance between internet connect speeds.  The closest server might have a really slow connection on their end, while a server over in the next state might have a big ol' fat connection.  So try a couple of different ones and take the best one.

I just got 75 ms, 8.99 DL, and 1.40 UL.  My ping is a little high, it should be closer to 50.

Just SW IP. Seems my service has been disrupted several times today, many times yesterday. He put in a service order. As far a speed, the numbers we get off speedtest.com are affected by this problem with connectivity. My test results were way low from the provisionals. They have a percentage of variation, which accounts for things such as high volume traffic at the server. For instance my provisional DL speed is 3.0 but they have a sorta +/- of 30%. Mine came to 1.52 on the speedtest which is way low (50%), but again, is probably due to line problems or something before my modem. I'll talk with the repair guy about changing IP servers on Monday--as you suggested. Thanks.

So in the ping test, the lower the faster? They ping me to, first see if someone is connected, then to time the ms back to them?

I was referring to the server on speedtest.net.  When it first comes up there is a map with a bunch of triangles on it.  Instead of clicking on start test, click a different triangle on the map.

But what you are talking about is likely the problem any way, so carry on.

OOOH. I got ya--  :-[  read my addition^^^ about ping tests.

Yes, for ping you want lower numbers.  It is how many milliseconds it takes a data packet to go from one machine to another and back.