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2351

Living Room / new system install - avoiding the BLOOOOAAAAAT

« Last post by nudone on January 15, 2007, 03:57 AM »

i'm currently installing everything back onto my machine - this time i'd like to keep it free of everything except for the 'essentials'.

so, just the software i use that has a REAL purpose - stuff i work with - not little things showing me the temperature or the time or the latest news or blah, blah, blah.

how long this will last is anyone's guess.

but the point of this post is this - i use the machine for video editing and encoding. quicktime seems to be a necessary component for this with things like adobe premiere (or it was in the past, not sure now), so can i get away with installing the quicktime alternative or do i have to use the apple version? i know, i know, i could just install it and find out - i probably will but i'm trying to avoid installing things and then uninstalling them if they aren't required - i'm trying my hardest to just install what is really going to work. apple's quicktime seems a little bloated to me.

the same question applies to codecs - in the past i've used the cccp pack as it sounded like the most well rounded collection of codecs - but i can't say it worked perfectly. i still required things like gomplayer or kmplayer to play some videos.

i appreciate there is no single right way to do all this but i'm interested it what other video people have done with their machine.

2352

N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: Cody Mug for NANY Participants

« Last post by nudone on January 15, 2007, 03:42 AM »

i think you got a mug also - mystery man...

2353

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 15, 2007, 03:10 AM »

f0dder, good idea about using the manufacturer's tool - i'll go and find it now.

and thanks, cranioscopical.

2354

N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007 / Re: Cody Mug for NANY Participants

« Last post by nudone on January 15, 2007, 03:07 AM »

and you look so happy too 

2355

Living Room / Re: DC Community Software Resource

« Last post by nudone on January 15, 2007, 03:06 AM »

isn't this like the 'my favourite software' thread?

2356

Living Room / Re: a 3D game that is only 97kb!

« Last post by nudone on January 15, 2007, 03:02 AM »

insane.

2357

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 04:24 PM »

hard drive now formatted and scanned again (/r switch) with no problems.

i hope this has cured it but i am now almost dreading putting any data onto the drive as i can imagine it acting up again. time will tell.

2358

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 12:41 PM »

The "verifying file data" means going through each sector of the drive, afaik trying to read from it. If you format the drive, be sure to do a "full format" - see if it locks up during that, too.

-f0dder (January 14, 2007, 12:27 PM)

will do. 

2359

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 12:19 PM »

the drive will happily get through chkdsk /f but trying the /r switch causes it to lock up during 'stage 4' - something to do with verifying file data, it says.

to be precise it stalls at 0% during this stage, bluescreens, then reboots. if the drive is scanned during the boot process then it also halts at 0%.

i thought the drive might be overheating or maybe it just couldn't sustain a constant period of access/activity, but i successfully transferred a 50 gig DV file off of it that took 1 hour to complete - no trouble at all.

i'm going to format it in a minute and see what happens after that.

2360

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 07:57 AM »

the other drive that is exactly the same model did the full scan without any errors. so it looks like it really is the bad drive that is at fault. i was beginning to think it was something else.

it still seems very odd behaviour that the drive causes a reboot when scanning.

2361

Living Room / Re: Cinematic Abbreviation Trivia... just for fun :D

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 06:38 AM »

er, well, i can't think of a single abbreviation that i remember from a film. TIE is a good one as i know it stuck in my mind for a short period of time when i first read the definition somewhere.

the only thing i can think of as i look through my dvd collection is this:

what does the word 'HAL' represent in 'HAL 900'. i know there aren't any philistines around here so you'll know and love the film (and novel).

2362

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 06:01 AM »

i can now report that running a full scan on the naughty drive (chkdsk /r) will consistently cause my machine to reboot during the scan. SMART still informs me that there is absolutely nothing physically wrong with the drive. other scans on other drives perform perfectly as expected.

i'm now going to run a full scan on an identical hard drive to the problem one - i just need to plug it in first.

2363

Living Room / Re: Cinematic Abbreviation Trivia... just for fun :D

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 05:05 AM »

i must say i thought you meant TIE fighter but i cannot remember what TIE stands for.

2364

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 02:40 AM »

f0dder, what you describe sounds very likely to me. on one of the reboots the machine started to scan the drive and found lots of bad data - i can only describe it as that as it took several minutes and several screens to finish the clear up task. it has only done this once, my manual scans of the drive either find nothing wrong or have made the machine crash, nothing is ever consistent. so formatting the drive sounds like the best thing to do to me.

cranioscopical, i used to say computers couldn't behave in weird ways but i've 'fixed' too many friends (and friends of friends, etc) machines to think that computers behave in a logical way. you may as well be a shaman of the pc when it comes to pc repair from what i've experienced.

2365

Living Room / Re: The Novint Falcon - What is It?

« Last post by nudone on January 14, 2007, 02:28 AM »

if it's as good as it looks in the videos i'd probably buy one. if it worked with 3d modelling apps.

2366

Living Room / Re: can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 13, 2007, 04:39 PM »

good point. i have other older machines but they don't have sata drive capabilities - maybe i could just get a sata pci card thing.

first, i'll remove all the data, then format the drive and then start again with it. first sign of it playing up and i'll scrap it.

the drive seems to behave perfectly until i start transferring data to or from it. well, that is what i first thought but it really doesn't do it consistently so i can't spot which file could be the problem - it's always something slightly different. no anti virus software is on the machine either - not since i've reinstalled windows today.

i'll leave it until tomorrow and then just carry on removing stuff from it.

2367

Living Room / can a file or folder structure make a pc crash at random?

« Last post by nudone on January 13, 2007, 03:48 PM »

i'm experiencing weird hard drive problems at the moment.

i was convinced that a particular hard drive was on it's way out and making my system lock up or reboot - but the SMART readings for this particular drive indicate it's perfectly healthy.

so, all i can see that might be wrong with the drive is the data that is on it. there's about 150 gig used on the drive and i'm slowly removing what i can from it just in case the drive does die.

therefore, my question is: am i talking rubbish - can something on this drive make my machine lock up or reboot when it feels like it - just data. i'm not running programs from it. the problem only occurs when the drive is being accessed in some way but it's not consistent and i can't see a pattern to it all.

i've spent today reinstalling windows xp and updating all the drivers - i've not really installed any of the programs i'd normally have on the machine. i was expecting this to cure the problem but the machine rebooted itself when i was transferring data from the dodgy(?) drive to a dvd - the machine rebooted as the data on the disk was about to be verified.

i'm prepared to throw the drive out the window if it's dying - how reliable is this SMART stuff?

heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!

2368

Living Room / Re: SuperboyAC's DC blog #1

« Last post by nudone on January 13, 2007, 07:17 AM »

superboyac, i think your mustache is brilliant. you should wear it more often.

2369

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for January 7th, 2006 - Codename "Who's Your NANY?"

« Last post by nudone on January 12, 2007, 02:07 AM »

extending the cody quotes is a much better idea - especially if promoting things related to members of the forum.

2370

Living Room / Re: Wallet Test = Honesty Test -> How Will People Behave?

« Last post by nudone on January 12, 2007, 02:04 AM »

i once found a wallet and took it to the local police station. there wasn't any money in it so it wasn't much of a test on my character.

2371

Living Room / Re: How do you spend your time on the computer?

« Last post by nudone on January 10, 2007, 03:19 AM »

zaine, i think your nursing home idea is brilliant. now i can feel good about collecting for the sake of collecting (well, now it has a purpose).

as for my pc bending me over - all in good time my dear fellow, all in good time. i'm sure it will happen in my lifetime.

2372

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: Barnacle - Add toolbars to your favorite programs

« Last post by nudone on January 10, 2007, 03:12 AM »

i apologise for deliberately not understanding your initial description of 'barnacle', skrommel.

i think i'm just frustrated because i don't know how to create a toolbar. i'll make the effort later to try and figure it out. i'm just being lazy at the moment.

2373

Living Room / Re: Develop Your Own Game with the Nowhere Engine

« Last post by nudone on January 10, 2007, 03:04 AM »

i'm in.

2374

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: Barnacle - Add toolbars to your favorite programs

« Last post by nudone on January 09, 2007, 06:17 AM »

i've been holding out but i'll show my ignorance now (forgive me)...

can we use this to add buttons to things like photoshop or anything that has a title/menu bar?

if so then i think it's amazing - i just need to figure out how to do so.

2375

General Software Discussion / Re: Motion Jpeg (.mjpeg) player or convert to mpg?

« Last post by nudone on January 09, 2007, 01:39 AM »

when i converted the file using the mplayer method i stated above - the converted file played back at a reasonable frame rate if you use 6 as the frame rate number.

if you aren't getting a realistic playback speed after that then it must be that the media player i'm using seems to understand better than the one you are using.

i've still no solution for the audio other than trying to understand the commands that mplayer can use for conversions.