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my home machine (winXP pro SP2, AMD 3gig, 1gig ram, ATI Radion 9200 video card, purchased as a Compat Presario S5500UK, had a few minor upgrades since then) has recently (last couple of months) developed the nasty habit of spontaniously rebooting at random. so far i can find no patern to this. on one occasion i was editing a txt file in notepad, about 2 other programs open, and it happened, which seems to rule out system load.
in fact system load (i use VMWare a lot) has nothing to do with this, as far as i can tell.
one week ago i reformatted C: (deleted and recreated the partition) to see if this would help. i did that Saturday evening.
Sunday i reinstalled various core programs i need, but only a bare minimum. the only hardware drivers i installed came from windows update - under the vague hope this would mean they were safe.
on Monday i got my next spontanious reboot.
i had installed VMWare 5.5.1, which installs drivers. that was the only candidate i could tie to the approximate time this started happening so i uninstalled 5.5.1, rebooted and installed VMWare 5.0
everything was fine, until today, when i got another spontanious reboot (Saturday), so just under a week between them, which is about average.
after the reboot windows reports the error about 95% of the time. when it does this the error report is:
Error type : Windows stop error (A message appears on a blue screen with error code information)
Solution available? : No (see Next steps)
What does this error mean? : Windows has encountered an error from which it cannot recover and needs to restart
Cause : Unknown device driver
Computer symptoms : A message appears on a blue screen with error code information (for example: e.g. 0x0000001E, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED)
i have just turned off automatic reboot to see if i really get a blue screen, and to see if it gives me any clues. windows is not giving me anything to go on here at all.
how much faith should i put in this error description? is it likely to be software or hardware?
last time one of my computers got this problem it spent 9 months bouncing back and forward between various people, never being fixed, before i finally gave in and purchased a whole new box, this one 
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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The first two suspects are usually heat and bad RAM, although if it only happens once a week, I think that would rule out hardware since bad hardware doesn't take that long to cause problems. 
--Mike--
Visual C++ MVP 
LINKS~! Ericahist | NEW!! PimpFish | CP SearchBar v3.0 | C++ Forum FAQ
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i did think about ram myself, but i am making the (wild?) assumption that running 3 VMWare machines simultaniously, with VS2003 or VS2005 active in two of them would stress test my system ram. after all, i only have 1 gig of system ram.
heat, i had not really considered that. the machine has a large fan which only kicks in when the machine is running "hot", and that is normally silent when there is a problem. assuming this fan is working correctly (certainly it does run) then this would suggest not heat, at least to me.
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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Michael Dunn wrote: The first two suspects are usually heat and bad RAM, although if it only happens once a week, I think that would rule out hardware since bad hardware doesn't take that long to cause problems.
not neccesarilly, I got an error 65-70hrs into a prime95 marathon burnin test for a CPU OC. Since OS level actions were only in the low single digit percentage range it could've gone weeks before the hardware fault caused a crash.
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as "luck" would have it i have brought home an 80gig external USB2 hard drive from work to move some large files back and forward between two machines.
i plugged the drive into the computer after making the above post, using a port on the PCI USB2 card i had fitted. i had the card lying around unused, and more USB ports are always useful.
the hard drive was detected just fine, i accessed it and deleted some files quite happily. then i started a 7 gig data move onto the drive. 2 minutes into the move i got a hard lockup in Windows. mouse would not move, no screen updates, keyboard lights would not toggle, CTRL-ALT-DEL did nothing. i left it 5 minutes, no change.
i was forced to do a hard reset. machine comes up, reconnect the USB drive to the same port on the expansion card and set the same transfer going, this time as a copy, see, i did learn something.
i was getting a terrible data transfer rate for USB2, and then a few minutes into the copy another hard lock! 
i have been using this card for (i think) a few months (under 6) with my USB2 pen drive and webcam without any problems.
this time i connected the HD to a different USB port, one on the front of the machine (so "built in"). i got a much better data transfer rate, and i have now done over 50 gig of data transfer to and from my machine with no problems at all.
i have already removed the PCI USB2 card, since it looks very suspicious. if the external drive was bad why does it work for people at work? why did it work perfectly on a different USB port?
however my big question is, does it sound possible that this card was the cause of my problems? since i have had this experience, and have now removed the card, if i get any more spontanious reboots i will do another reformat, to make sure the machine looses all memory of the card.
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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I think you may also check your PC power supply, sometimes, the Power supply became unstable due to life time.
I don't know what's the model of your power supply. usually, you have to consider your power supply after any upgrade your pc hardware.
I just have a quick look on your post, you should got two pc, right? using the power supply of stable one to run the other.
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I have a set of powered speakers that do not seem to be working. When the speakers power is switched off I can hear sound from the speakers although it is extremely quiet. To hear the sound at a decent level the source volume has to be up extremely high. However when I switch the speakers power on I get no sound from the speakers at all despite the power light indicating the speakers are getting power.
It is my understanding powered speakers amplify the source no matter what it is so I tried connecting the speakers to my laptop as well as my mp3 player but no sound could be heard from either except when the speakers power was off.
Is there any reason this could be happenning or is it a case of broken speakers?
SuzyB
<i>If I had a better memory I would remember more.</i>
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it might depends on the source.
for example, on my iPod, if I use the dock, it has an line-out that if volume "independant", so when I plug it into my amp, the volume will be controlled by the amp.
but if I plug it with the headphone port, I have to be certain that the iPod volume is set at least high to be the equivalent of the line-out.
so, check where you plugged you powered speakers either in a line-out or an headphone port.
Maximilien Lincourt
Your Head A Splode - Strong Bad
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I tried the speakers with my portable cd player (yes I even dug that relic out of the cupboard) and with another PC. When connected to the cd player sound could be heard when the speakers were switched on but even at maximum volume the sound was barely audible. With the PC, sound could be heard through both powered and non powered speakers but again even at max volume the sound was barely audible.
All I'm trying to do is establish if the speakers work so I can flog them. 
SuzyB
If I had a better memory I would remember more.
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Modern PC sound cards are designed to drive line inputs. They no longer have a power amplifier on them to drive speakers directly. You absolutely need a separate amplifier.
Your other equipment was designed to drive headphones. Headphones don't need so much power to produce decent output. The CD player sounds like it has a greater maximum output than your other devices.
It sounds like the amplifier chip itself has died. The little sound you hear when at maximum volume is probably just leakage from the input.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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OK thanks. That helps me understand things a little better.
SuzyB
If I had a better memory I would remember more.
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Hello,
I am working on a project where I would like to write a web application (html, css, javascript, and php) to interact with a server. I need to be able to run it from a PDA browser.
I am currently looking into the Palm OS LifeDrive.
The PDA I end up choosing should be able to lock a program (like the browser), so that users can only use that program, unless they can provide a password to unlock all other functionality.
Also, it would be great if one could disable the address bar on the browser (so that one can only visit sites that are directly linked from the default website).
If anyone has used this PDA in the past and can provide any information that address the above concerns, it would be greatly appreciated. Or if anyone can provide suggestions for other PDAs that could meet all the requirements, that too would be appreciated.
Thanks in advanced,
-----------------
Genaro
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Hi all,
I'm doing work for a client of mine who would like to have a siren or light notify the user when a print job is detected in his warehouse.
Unfortuantely, the printer has an embedded print server, which is connected to a hub/router/switch using RJ45 cabling.
I'm a software developer with some good electricial experience. What do you think is possible? Wiring up a light/siren is no problem, its detecting the print job on the printer. Since the RJ45 line is a serial pipe, there will occasionally be traffic on the pipe that is NOT a print job, so tapping one of the lines into a relay just wont work.
Just curious to see if anybody thinks this is possible.
Mike
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Mike Doner wrote: Just curious to see if anybody thinks this is possible.
I'm only answering because no one else has had any ideas for you.
If this is a Microsoft AD domain, set up a print queue (talk to the local network admin), once all of the computers are printing through the queue, it’s fairly (as memory serves) to audit the queue. Any time a user prints write app that monitors the queue and provided it’s the correct printer sound the alarm. Simple enough, huh
Alternatively, and I have no idea how on earth you would do this but, couldn’t you just set up a small infa red deal where the paper is spit out of the printer? Any time the beam is broken sound the alarm. Similar to the way small business have enunciators at the doors to let clerks know someone has come in.
I'd love to help, but unfortunatley I have prior commitments monitoring the length of my grass. :Andrew Bleakley:
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Hello. In the Registry in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum is a list of hardware in Win2000/XP as showed in the device manager. The problem is, that there is every hardware which was installed on the computer, even if the hardware isn't currently installed on the computer. Now my question: How can I find out which devices are active(currently installed) und which are not?
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Look at the hardware ID for all devices in device manager (proporties etc).
Match them up with the IDs in the ENUM section, and delete the ones that dont.
It doesnt matter if you delete a device that is present. The inf file is still in windows\inf and the PnP manager will re add that ID to the ENUM section based on the inf file when it finds the new hardware.
Nunc est bibendum
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Hey guys,
I have a Samsung Dual Layer DVD Writer and the other day I put in a movie DVD in and it asked me to select either Region 2 or 4 (in PowerDVD) and it diabled the other region choices.
It has never done this before...so I selected my region (Region 2 South Africa) and it says "This disk is inhibited from playing because of area limit." This is strange because I am in region 2 so I went to regional settings and it shows the DVD drive is on Region 1!!! So I tried changing it to Region 2 (South Africa) and it keeps giving an error message "Cannot change region settings, put correct region DVD in drive or use Admin rights.
What should I do to undo this? I can downloaded the firmware from the samsung but I don't know the model number!
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Hey howzit?
Even if I get the model number...that still doesn't solve my problem. Will running firmware software clear the region codes associated with the drive or not?
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Hello,
I have some weird problem connecting two hdd's and one cd-rom drive at the same time. I can connect either the two hdd's or a single hdd with the cd-rom but can't get it to work all together. The interesting thing is that according to the BIOS settings both IDE slots (primary/secondary) are turned on, but only one of them works. I didn't wrote down the exact motherboard model. Is this a BIOS or motherboard issue. For those who will suppose that there is a problem with the motherboard, I've tried the same thing on identical configuration and the effect is just the same.
Any clues on how to work around the problem?
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Hi.. there is no problem in your mother board.. and no problem in ur bios...
Just set the jumpers of your both HDD and CDD. The jumpers on the HDD and CDD are near to the power and data connectors. hope u under stand where jumpers are there....
And about how to set the jumpers just see the HDD and CDD labels that are fixed on the HDD and CDD... there they have mentioned about the settings..
hope you got the answer... this will work... please try carefully..
Bawa
Bawa
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Hey, I've difficulties beside setting up the jumpers, yes they are set up as supposed to:, master/slave etc. This doesen't solve the problem.
Thanks for the support anyway
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