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Tips &
Techniques - Troubleshooting Tips |
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Solution: It sounds like your
motherboard's bus speed is set incorrectly. You see, you probably bought and
Athlon XP 3200+ that runs on a 400MHz bus (which is actually a double-pumped
200Mhz bus). For the motherboard to recognize the CPU as a 3200+, the CPU has
to run at 2.2GHz, or 2,200MHz. The CPU reaches that speed only if the
motherboard is set to an 11 multiplier and with a 200MHz bus. So,
11x200=2200. If your motherboard's frontside bus is set to run at 166MHz, the
CPU would boot at 1833MHz. It's no coincidence that this is the same speed at
an Athlon XP 2200+. To correct this, reboot your machine and go into the BIOS
by hitting DEL or F2 during boot. Look for the section that lets you change
the bus speed. Hopefully we're right and it's set for 166MHz. Increase it to
400MHz, save the settings, reboot and you should have a 3200+. Symptom:
My optical drive has suddenly slowed to a crawl reading discs, and it refuses
to read some discs. Solution: Optical drives usually don't
expire gradually; most simply stop working without so much as a death rattle.
It's much more likely you drive's lens has accumulated a layer of dust. Symptom: I
just bought a new PC, and now my PocketPC refuses to connect via the USB
port. Solution: This is a common issue. You'll
have to buy a new PocketPC. Just kidding. This problem occurs if you plug
your PocketPC in before installing ActiveSync. Check the Device Manager by
right-clicking My Computer, selecting Properties, clicking the Hardware tab,
and then selecting Device Manager. If you see an Unknown Device entry, delete
it by right-clicking it and selecting Uninstall. Restart you PC, install your
PocketPCs drivers from the manufacturer's disc, and plug it in again. PC AUDIO AND MP3S Symptom:
I'm only getting sound out of one speaker. Solution: This usually happens when the
mini-jack coming out of your speakers us not fully plugged into the soundcard
input slot. Reversed polarity of a speaker can cause some of the weirdness as
well, so make sure the positive terminal on the actual speaker is connected
to the positive terminal on the subwoofer (or wherever the speakers connect
to the amplifier), and vice versa for the negative terminals. One final
possibility: Pet owners should routinely check speaker cables for teeth marks
and replace the cables when Mr. Bigglesworth eats through the outer layer. Symptom:
The remote control for my PC speakers suddenly stopped working the other day.
I installed new batteries but it still won't work. Is it dead? Solution: Probably not. It sounds more
like a sleeping remote. To wake it up, simply remove the batteries and press
every button on the remote in a sequential order. Then just replace the
batteries and your remote should work again. Symptom:
Sometimes I'll rip a worn CD, only to find later that some tracks have skips
in them. Solution: This is a common problem, and
can be easily fixed. Go to www.exactaudiocopy.de (don't worry-the site is in
English). We've brayed about Exact Audio Copy before, and here's why: When
Exact Audio Copy rips audio it double-checks that data for accuracy, and if
it detects any discrepancies between the original and the rip, it will
extract the data again and again until it has determined that the result
precisely matches what's on the disc. If the error correction is unable to
compensate for a flaw in the disc and the data is irretrievable, Exact Audio
Copy will let you know, sparing you from unpleasant surprises later. Oh, and
did we mention Exact Audio Copy is free? Life is good. Symptom:
My Creative Labs Jukebox Zen Xtra keeps crashing. Is it broken? Solution: If a single bit in an MP3 file
is out of place or errant for any reason, it can make many MP3 players lock
up or crash. You'll know this is the case if your player crashes on the same
track every time. If so, you'll have to remove or re-encode the track. If an
errant track is not the problem-you'll know this is the case because it won't
crash on the same song/s-you may be able to rehabilitate your player be
reformatting the drive. You'll find instructions at the Creative Labs web
site. Go to Support, click Portable Audio, and select "Troubleshooting
the Nomad Jukebox 3 as a Standalone Unit" (also known as Solution ID
#7392). Reformatting will delete the contents of your player, of course, so
make sure you have all your music backed up before you go for it. Symptom: I
can burn audio CDs and listen to them on my PC, but my portable CD player and
car stereo can't recognize them. Solution: Commercial CDs are literally
stamped from extruded masters, creating pits and lands that CD players have
been designed to read. Burned CD, however, create darkened areas that mimic
the pits and lands of commercial CDs. As you've noticed, not all
players-especially older ones-can deal with these kinds of discs. But all is
not lost. Your best bet is to burn at a slower speed, 4x or below. This
creates slightly more prominent differences between the burned and non-burned
areas. If you have a Plextor burner, though, you have an even better option.
The bundled Plex Tools includes VariRec, which allows you to subtly alter the
burning strength of your optical drives laser. By experimenting with various
discs and burning strengths, you will almost certainly find the right
combination for your CD player. VariRec is supported by both Nero and Easy CD
Creator. We've used it to make audio CDs playable on otherwise uncooperative
boom boxes. PC BUILDING
TROUBLESHOOTING Solution: Random crashes are always hard
to diagnose, so let's cover all the bases. The first area to check is your
drivers. Make sure you have the latest drivers for all your hardware,
especially the motherboard chipset drivers. You should also make sure you've
downloaded all Windows Updates. Next, consider your power supply. If you're
running a midsize 300-watt PSU, and upgraded to a late model Pentium 4 CPU or
Athlon FX, or are just running several hard drives and PCI add-in cards, you
should upgrade your power supply to a 400 watt or thereabouts model.
Inadequate power to your components can cause the entire system to lock up at
worst, or just cause certain components to malfunction or stop working. The
final consideration is cooling. Ideally, you should have a decent size fan in
the lower front of your case sucking in cool air from the ouside, and a large
exhaust fan above your AGP card pull air out of the case. Symptom:
I'm building a new PC and have the motherboard mounted inside the case. When
I push the AGP card all the way down in the slot, the end of the metal tab on
the slot cover hits the bottom of the case, preventing me from inserting the
AGP edge connector all the way. Solution: Even though every ATX
motherboard and ATX case should be exactly the same dimensions, there are
still small variances that can create problems when transplanting your
hardware into a new environment. It's fairly common for the videocard to not
quite fit, and when this happens the solution is to simply bend the end of
the metal slot cover away from the board ever so slightly. This will afford
it the extra millimeter or so of clearance the card needs to fit all the way
down into the slot. But be careful! WIRELESS (WiFi)
NETWORKING TROUBLESHOOTING Symptom:
My wireless laptop will not connect to my wireless router. It can't even see
it! Solution: Usually Wi-Fi connection
problems are the result of configuration errors, incompatible firmware, or
interference with another router. It's easy to fix firmware issues-all you
need to do is download the latest firmware for your wireless router
manufacturer's web site. If you've installed the firmware update and still
can't connect, your next step is to temporarily disable WEP or WPA. If you
can connect to the router when security is disabled, check all your WEP
settings. You need to use exactly the same key on your router and any
machines that connect to it wirelessly. Also make sure the Authentication
Type on each of the PCs matches the setting on the router. Troubleshooting
interference issues is more complex. First, you should move your router off
of the default channel. Most routers shipped today are set at channel 6 be
default, and the sheer traffic can create a lot of interference. You should
also uncheck the field that says, "Automatically connect to non-preferred
networks"-there is no advantage to the feature and it can cause your
computer to behave erratically if you're in the proximity of the other
networks. If you're still having problems connecting, there may be a hardware
problem on your laptop. Check Device Manager and make sure there isn't an
exclamation point beside your Wi-Fi card. You should also try connection to
another router that you know works properly. Finally, try connecting to your
network using the same settings, but a different brand of Wi-Fi card. Symptom:
My broadband connection feels like it's downloading really slow. Solution: Sadly, there isn't much you can
do to improve your broadband connection's performance without spending more
money to upgrade your existing service. Sure, there are a whole lot of
products out there that claim to "improve your broadband speed" but
we don't know of anything that actually works. Symptom: I
can't see the other computers on my home network from my laptop. What can I
do to make it work right? Solution: First, you need to make sure that
each computer you want to connect to belongs to the same workgroup. Open the
Start Menu and right-click My Computer. Go to Properties, then Computer Name.
If your workgroup name doesn't match, you can change it by clicking the
Change button. Some versions of Windows only show the computers that actually
have shared folders or printers, so make sure you have at least one folder
shared on every computer you're trying to connect to. The next step is to
disable your firewall. By default, most firewalls block the ports used by
Windows networking, keeping even legitimate users-like you-from connecting to
your machine. If all your machines use the same workgroup and your firewalls
are disabled, and you're using a wireless router, your problem could be the
router. If your wired machines can all see each other, but a wired machine
can't see a wireless machine, it's almost certainly the router's fault.
Barring a firmware update that fixes the problem, there's no easy way top
connect your machines if this is the case. Check with your router
manufacturer for a newer version of the firmware. If that doesn't work, you
may need to get newer hardware. Here's one last tip: You can try to connect
to your computer's specific IP address instead of its name. To find the IP address,
go to the Network Connections control panel, right-click your network card,
and select Status. The IP address is on the Support tab. Once you have the
IP, you can go back to your other computer and put //IP.address.here/ into
Explorer. If you have shared folders on the PC you're trying to connect to,
they should pop up immediately. HARD DRIVE
TROUBLESHOOTING Symptom: I
just got a new Serial ATA hard drive, but when I try to load the image of my
current drive onto it, the drive-imaging software doesn't recognize my new
hard drive. Solution: This is a problem that has vexed
us as well, and it comes down to the fact that most drive-imaging software
programs don't recognize Serial ATA controllers and therefore won't let you
image the drives connected to it. We've tested practically every imaging
program on the market in the Lab, and the only one that successfully moved an
image to a SATA drive and made it bootable was Symantec's (formerly
Powerquest) Drive Image 2002. Symptom: I
just plugged in a brand-new hard drive but it's not showing up in Windows XP. Solution: All brand-new hard drives are
sold unformatted and thus don't show up in Windows until they've gone through
the formatting process. To get up and running, connect the drive, boot your
PC, and at the Windows desktop right-click the My Computer icon and select
Manage. Click Disk Management in the left-hand tree, and every drive
connected to your system will show up. Simply right-click your new drive and
select New Partition. Then follow the steps to get your drive up and running. Symptom:
My system crashed, and when I rebooted, my RAID array was no longer working
properly. Solution: RAID arrays can stop functioning
for several reasons, but it's usually a case of a cable coming loose or
something in the BIOS being reset. Serial ATA cables easily come out of their
drives, so check them first. If everything is connected properly, you should
also check to make sure that the ports your array is plugged into are set to
"RAID" rather then "IDE." Because these ports often
double as either standard IDE ports or RAID ports, they must be set in the
BIOS to one or the other. Be sure to check here first if your array suddenly
disappears. WINDOWS XP
TROUBLESHOOTING Symptom:
My computer is acting odd. Loads of windows open all the time, and I'm
getting a bunch of popup windows that don't look like Internet Explorer
windows. Solution: Your problem is most likely
caused be incoming Messenger service messages. In a networked corporate
environment, Messenger is used to send time sensitive messages about server
outages, and software updates, but there's really no reason to leave
Messenger running at home. To disable it, go to Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and then Services. Scroll down to Messenger, right-click
it, and select Properties. Change the Setup Type to Disabled and then press
OK. Symptom: A
couple of days ago, my computer began behaving very oddly. The disk runs a
lot, even when I'm not using the computer, and my browser home page is reset
to a site I've never been to before. Solution: This sounds like a classic case
of spyware infection. There are two apps we recommend for combating spyware:
Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware. You can download Spybot from
www.safer-networking.org and get Ad-Aware from www.lavasoft.de. Both
applications scan your hard drive for potential spyware and will hep you
reomove it if detected. We recommend using both apps, because sometimes one
application will detect a new spyware program that the other won't. If one of
the applications detects spyware on your PC, it will either automatically
remove it, or give you instructions that allow you to remove it. Symptom:
My e-mail frequently stops working-it often stalls when receiving and
sending. And no matter how many times I change the e-mail settings, it
reverts to "localhost." Solution: There's an outside change the
problem could be a virus, but the most likely culprit is your antivirus
program or your spam filtering program. These apps work by situating
themselves between your mail program and your e-mail server, then taking a
look at every piece of mail you receive. But if one of these programs crashes
or needs input from you, it will hold up the e-mail download and your mail
program will think the connection has died. If this happens, just restart
your antivirus program and spam filtering program and try downloading
messages again. Symptom: I
keep losing menu options in Microsoft Word. Solution: Our bet is that you really like
to use em-dashes. The default keyboard shortcut for an em-dash is
Ctrl+Alt+the numpad Dash, but people often mistakenly press Ctrl+Alt+ the
Dash on the primary keyboard, which is the default keyboard shortcut for
"Remove item from the menu." After you call up that shortcut, your
cursor will change to bold minus sign and the next menu or shortcut you click
will disappear from Word. The solution? Don't use so many em-dashes! Alternately,
you can remap the em-dash shortcut to something a little more convenient. Go
to Tools, Customize, Commands, and then click the Keyboard button. Then,
under Categories, scroll down to Common Symbols and click Em-dash in the
right pane. Change the hotkey to whatever you'd like. We like Ctrl+M. To get
back the menu items that you've lost, go to Tools, Customize, Commands, and
drag the elusive commands back into place. Symptom: I
keep accidentally e-mailing my friend at her old address because the program
created a shortcut for me. Solution: This is an easy fix. When you're
typing the name into your To: field, scroll up and down until you get to the
one you want to delete. When it's highlighted press the Delete key and it
will be gone forever! Symptom: I
get a ton of spam every day. Solution: There are a couple of really
good, free anti-spam utilities available today-SpamPal (www.spampal.org) and
Popfile (popfile.sourceforge.net). They use slightly different approaches,
but each can reduce your spam intake by up to 99 percent. SpamPal analyzes
every e-mail you receive and compares the path it took across the Internet
with the servers and IP addresses of known spammers. It's very effective
right out of the box, but if you frequently receive e-mail from countries
where spam is known to originate, such as China, Russia, and Taiwan, or from
webmail services like Yahoo, which are frequently abused by spammers, you may
see a lot of false positives. |