The Technology Troubleshooting Thread

[One Punch Doug Crashin]

MY Gaming desktop cost me 600. It's a gateway with a Core i-7 4 gigs of ram and a 1.5 terrabyte hard drive. The monitor I have now is a Viewsonic 3-D ready monitor which was 300. So yea it's gonna cost you at least 1,000 for a decent gaming rig.

 

[Remy LaCroix]

My PS3 won't read any discs. I looked online and a playstation forum gave the worst advice: reformat the damn thing and hope it works. Some people lost all their info and it still didn't work. I don't want to go down that road.

Should I get one of those cleaning discs or what?

 

[Slyfox696]

My PS3 won't read any discs. I looked online and a playstation forum gave the worst advice: reformat the damn thing and hope it works. Some people lost all their info and it still didn't work. I don't want to go down that road.

Should I get one of those cleaning discs or what?

That's really shitty advice. Whomever gave that was probably just fucking with people.

When did it start (like did you just do an upgrade)? What does it say when it fails? Will it play DVD or Blu-Ray?

 

[Remy LaCroix]

About a month ago, but I hadn't upgraded in a while. Nothing pops up when I insert a DVD, CD, or game; I dont have a Blu-Ray disc to test it out with.

 

[Slyfox696]

About a month ago, but I hadn't upgraded in a while. Nothing pops up when I insert a DVD, CD, or game; I dont have a Blu-Ray disc to test it out with.

Did your problems start when you upgraded? How old is the PS3?

 

[justinsayne]

My PS3 won't read any discs. I looked online and a playstation forum gave the worst advice: reformat the damn thing and hope it works. Some people lost all their info and it still didn't work. I don't want to go down that road.

Should I get one of those cleaning discs or what?

Have you tried this...

However, if your PS3 is unable to read any of your discs, the problem is most likely an issue with the console itself. Often this problem is caused by excessive dust buildup in the unit and on the blu-ray lens. Your first step for repairing this problem should be cleaning the unit carefully. This can be done in part by spraying condensed air into the vents of the unit so that dust particles are expelled. Next, you should get a blu-ray lens cleaner to clean the lens itself.

It is likely that cleaning your unit will clear up your disc read error problems, but if this is not the case then you will need to move onto slightly more complicated fixes. It may be that your blu-ray lens is misaligned. Realigning the lens can be done at home, but you should get a copy of a PS3 repair guide such as PS3 Repaired to help walk you through all the steps of this process.

 

[Muffin Top Merkley]

My PS3 won't read any discs. I looked online and a playstation forum gave the worst advice: reformat the damn thing and hope it works. Some people lost all their info and it still didn't work. I don't want to go down that road.

Should I get one of those cleaning discs or what?

Save your data, saves to a flash drive before reformatting it so you don't lose what you need/want to keep.

EDIT: If you decide to reformat. Sly's questions are also very important too.

 

[SD619]

I'm planning on getting a 1TB external hard drive. I have narrowed my choices down to Western Digital and Seagate. Which would better? Both are of almost the same price.

Also, my laptop has a 2.0 USB port. Will I be able to use a 3.0 USB device(without any converter)?

 

[Ty Burna]

I'm planning on getting a 1TB external hard drive. I have narrowed my choices down to Western Digital and Seagate. Which would better? Both are of almost the same price.

Also, my laptop has a 2.0 USB port. Will I be able to use a 3.0 USB device(without any converter)?

They are about a horse a piece between Seagate and Western Digital when it comes to their internal drives. I have found however that Western Digital external drives tend to be a little better then Seagate. If you could post up a link to the two drives I could look and say which one is better for you.

In regards to your USB question, yes USB 3.0 drives are backwards compatibile with USB 2.0 ports so you should be able to use it with no problems. You will see it transfer at USB 2.0 speeds rather then USB 3.0.

 

[Slyfox696]

They are about a horse a piece between Seagate and Western Digital when it comes to their internal drives. I have found however that Western Digital external drives tend to be a little better then Seagate. If you could post up a link to the two drives I could look and say which one is better for you.

In regards to your USB question, yes USB 3.0 drives are backwards compatibile with USB 2.0 ports so you should be able to use it with no problems. You will see it transfer at USB 2.0 speeds rather then USB 3.0.

And I like Seagate more than Western Digital, but really you just have to compare more than brand names to decide which is better.

 

[SD619]

They are about a horse a piece between Seagate and Western Digital when it comes to their internal drives. I have found however that Western Digital external drives tend to be a little better then Seagate. If you could post up a link to the two drives I could look and say which one is better for you.

In regards to your USB question, yes USB 3.0 drives are backwards compatibile with USB 2.0 ports so you should be able to use it with no problems. You will see it transfer at USB 2.0 speeds rather then USB 3.0.

Western Digital

Seagate

 

[Ty Burna]

Western Digital

Seagate

Not much of a difference there, I would go with the Seagate one based on what reviews I could find on both hard drives. That and I have a somewhat similar external Seagate drive like that that and it works great.

And I like Seagate more than Western Digital, but really you just have to compare more than brand names to decide which is better.

Agreed. To be fair, all my networked drives I have on my main rig are all Seagate. I flip flop between companies so much anyway. I used to be a big Nvidia fan but now all I ever use is ATI. Hard drives are the same, for a long time I always used Western Digital, now I've come back around to Seagate. It's all about the quality of the product being put out and I'm not ashamed to switch between brands if it dictates I should.

 

[Mayonnaise Warrior]

I'm trying to install 007 Bloodstone, but when I try, my antivirus says that the setup.exe is malware and I can't install it.

 

[1C3-M4N]

Try right clicking and hit run as administrator on the install. Or else you might want to turn off your antivirus install the program then turn the antivirus back on. Shouldn't be too much of a problem there's plenty of ways to bypass antivirus if your trying to install something.

 

[alfonzo13]

I have a 160gb Playstation 3 System, and it will read Playstation 1 games, regular DVD's, and music CD's. It will not read PS3 or any BluRay discs. For example, if I insert a PS3 or BluRay disc, it will spin for about 10 seconds, make a sound like it's going to eject the disc, and then nothing happens. I have been thinking that its the BluRay drive, but I'm not sure.

Would anybody have a guess to what the problem might be?

 

[tommyh]

I have an I phone 4 from AT&T. When me an my wife use face time if I wear the earphones that came with my I phone I have trouble hearing my wife. I may hear 5 words she says our of 50. However if I do not have in my ear phones I'm able 2 hear her fine. Anyon have an idea why I can't hear with my ear phones on. I thought it may of been them at first but I can listen to music an everything is fine with them. Just does that with face time.

 

[.]

I got a new laptop today, a few minutes after it starts up I get a blue screen with "physical memory dump" the it restarts, rinse and repeat.

Literally the only things I did with it was install Firefox and antivirus. Any idea what's wrong with it?

 

[Slyfox696]

I got a new laptop today, a few minutes after it starts up I get a blue screen with "physical memory dump" the it restarts, rinse and repeat.

Literally the only things I did with it was install Firefox and antivirus. Any idea what's wrong with it?

If it's happened a couple of times already, take it back. Immediately. Get a replacement. Most likely there's some kind of hardware problem.

 

[Ty Burna]

Sly's absolutely right, take it back and get a replacement. There's no reason for a brand new laptop to get the BSOD straight from the get go, there's a hardware issue going on and any reputable store would replace it no problem.

I'm not 100% sure it's a hardware issue but it certainly sounds like it, and it's not something that will just go away.

 

[pyrusane]

I got a new laptop today, a few minutes after it starts up I get a blue screen with "physical memory dump" the it restarts, rinse and repeat.

Literally the only things I did with it was install Firefox and antivirus. Any idea what's wrong with it?

You say you installed antivirus, was it AVG by any chance? There is a known issue with AVG causing BSoD on Windows 7 machines. I had the same issue with this computer when I bought it a few months ago, did a complete remove of AVG and the problem disappeared...

 

[.]

You say you installed antivirus, was it AVG by any chance? There is a known issue with AVG causing BSoD on Windows 7 machines. I had the same issue with this computer when I bought it a few months ago, did a complete remove of AVG and the problem disappeared...

Nah it was Avast.

 

[UFOcalling]

Help! I got a new computer, and I went to D/L the software for my digital camera (which is a few years older). The camera is a Olympus Stylus 770 SW. I went to Olympus' website (which is what I did before to get the software), and plugged in all my info. When I got to my camera, it said that there were no downloads for my model.

I no longer have the install disc that came with the camera (at least I can't find it), and it used to be so easy! When I would plug the camera into the PC (via the USB cable) the software would pop up and show me all the photos on the camera. I don't want to have to buy a SD card reader, I just want it to work the way it used to.

The only thing I could think of is to try downloading other software that Olympus offers on their site, with the hope that one of them would be compatible. Before I try that, I figured I'd post here in case anyone knows if that will work (before I waste all that time). Any ideas? Please help! Thank you!

 

[UFOcalling]

Please disregard my earlier post. After a few minutes of fucking around with the camera, I was able to view all the files via windows. Sorry for wasting everyone's time, if I could delete my earlier post I would! Sorry again

 

[Slyfox696]

Help! I got a new computer, and I went to D/L the software for my digital camera (which is a few years older). The camera is a Olympus Stylus 770 SW. I went to Olympus' website (which is what I did before to get the software), and plugged in all my info. When I got to my camera, it said that there were no downloads for my model.

I no longer have the install disc that came with the camera (at least I can't find it), and it used to be so easy! When I would plug the camera into the PC (via the USB cable) the software would pop up and show me all the photos on the camera. I don't want to have to buy a SD card reader, I just want it to work the way it used to.

The only thing I could think of is to try downloading other software that Olympus offers on their site, with the hope that one of them would be compatible. Before I try that, I figured I'd post here in case anyone knows if that will work (before I waste all that time). Any ideas? Please help! Thank you!

While you mention you figured it out, the drivers for your camera are likely installed by Windows 7 by default. So once you plugged it in, you should be able to see everything you need.

For anyone with this problem in the future.

 

[Alex]

I tried uploading a video I made to Youtube. The first half doesn't work properly (only the audio does) but the second part works fine. It all runs perfectly fine when I watch it using Quicktime though.