I am biologically incapable of resisting offers of Free Computer Help

wreckedcarzz, I don't know if this falls outside your area of expertise, I will post the problem here in case it does, but falls inside somebody else's area, and they want to take a shot at it.

If you, or anybody else, has a solution idea, please PM me so that the thread will not be hijacked any worse than I am doing now by posting this at all.

Here is the situation:

A website consists of html files, with the exception of 3 .asp pages.

When I ftp the files (I use FileZilla or WS-ftp, and yes, I do it ASCII) to my computer, and open them in my browser, whether FireFox or Internet Exploder, instead of displaying correctly, the asp code is splattered all over the place as if it had thrown up on itself, and if I put the file back into the website's directory, so it remains, even though I have not even touched the file.

This is the case even if I have not even opened the file at all, even in a regular text editor. Just the very act of being ftped to my computer turns the file into a hot mess.

This makes it impossible, obviously, for me to make even the slightest changes to the non-asp code parts of the pages.

I have been spinning my wheels for weeks, googling to see if anyone else has ever had such a problem, and if so, how they solved it, but to no avail.

(Attempts to edit php files are similarly plagued. With php files, Internet Exploder even tells me it does not know how to open them, though on the web, it has no problem. And if I tell it that either FireFox or Exploder is to open them, in Exploder all I get is the page source, and in Firefox, vomited  code like I get with asp files.)

Again, this is only when the files have been ftped to my machine, on the web, both browsers display asp and php pages just fine.

I am running Windows XP SP3, but the problem was there even before the SP 3 update, so I am sure it is not related to that.

I apologize for inserting such an off-topic topic, but it did say "free computer help," words that should probably not be typed anywhere I can see them.

And thanks to any and all who have any ideas. I do not care how stupid I will feel if someone tells me some totally basic thing I have failed to click somewhere. I have never claimed clue ownership.

I will be the minority opinion holder and suggest that you talk to the seller a little bit, to rule out the possibility that s/he might have purchased something that was fraudulently labeled, and just thrown it up on eBay.

It is true that you might be dealing with someone who deliberately seeks to mislead people about what they are selling, but you might also be dealing with someone who is not that knowledgeable or sophisticated, and if that is the case, you could have the opportunity for what educators would call a "teaching moment," meaning that you might be able to do the person a favor by educating them a little bit about it all, maybe give them some pointers to sites that they can visit to learn more about it, etc.

So whether you should tell eBay would, to me, depend on whether you would be "ratting" on a person who was knowingly engaging in shady business practices, or someone who is just as much a victim of those practices as you are!

I collect Dirts of the World.

A long time ago, I started asking anybody who was going anywhere to bring me back some dirt. Most people just put a little bit into the film cans people used back then, but sometimes they will put it in a little decorative box or container from the country, so I get a bonus present!

And a couple went above and beyond - my collection includes a little chip of the Coliseum in Rome, the Great Wall of China, and a bit of dirt from Jim Morrison's grave. (Yes, if everybody did that, it would be just awful, and nobody should ever do it, and I never asked for anything but dirt from the country so don't hate. All countries have plenty of dirt.)

In recent years, of course, the dirt has to be sort of smuggled, so what people will usually do is - hmm. I still have some countries left to go, so maybe it will be better if I do not go into strategies.

Visitors from here and there are always tickled to see a little bottle with their country's dirt, and when I plant something that originated in a particular country, I can put a tiny, tiny pinch of dirt from there in to help it grow and give it good luck!

But the best part is to always have so much of the whole world right here with me, and I like to think that all the dirts are as excited as I am when a new one arrives.

It will probably take my whole life, but I hope that by the I am old, I will have dirt from every country - the world on a shelf!   :)