The Official Computer Tech Support Thread

[noise]

ipods are finicky things. the music gets sent there all scrambled up. well not literally, but each track gets a random name and goes into a random folder, then a database is written to tell the ipod where to find everything and how to put it all back together.

your database is corrupted. it happens sometimes. nothing you can do but reset it with itunes and sync it again.

[FETCHER.]

Yeah I fixed it last night, took me til almost 5am. I'm not a happy chappy. but eventually I fixed it, thank you very much for the help

[NumberNineDream]

I just have a really simple question:

How can my I.P address show that I'm in Netherlands, when I'm very far from there?

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

I just have a really simple question:

How can my I.P address show that I'm in Netherlands, when I'm very far from there?

You're either browsing through a proxy server located in the Netherlands, or your Internet Service Provider is based there.

[Astronomer]

Does anyone with any knowledge of Macs know how I could make my macbook stop overheating? After I've been using it for a while, it overheats and the fan goes crazy loud. The only thing I've done to help is put books under each corner to elevate it off the desk when I'm using it but I don't know if that really does anything lol... does anyone know of any way to make it run slower and cooler or something?

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

Does anyone with any knowledge of Macs know how I could make my macbook stop overheating? After I've been using it for a while, it overheats and the fan goes crazy loud. The only thing I've done to help is put books under each corner to elevate it off the desk when I'm using it but I don't know if that really does anything lol... does anyone know of any way to make it run slower and cooler or something?

Well, I don't have much Mac experience, but overheating is overheating, regardless of the brand.
In most cases, your computer will have a mechanism to shut itself off immediately if it overheats to the point of near damaging.
But if you're simply just hearing a loud fan kick in, then your fan is just loud, and it's kicking in like normal fans kick in when the computer's temperature rises beyond a specific level.
But if your fan sounds like it's abnormally loud, and you're hearing some obvious signs of wrongness, you may just have to change out your fan.
Usually that's a better step to try first, as it's cheaper than just assuming your computer is overheating and buying something more expensive for it.

There are also free programs available on the web that can monitor and tell you what temperature your main hardware is running at.
You can then compare your readings to the average safe temperatures that you'll undoubtedly also be able to find on the web.


Either way, one obvious rule I like to observe, that I always see people ignore, is:
Never put your laptop directly on your bed or any like-surface. The venting underneath the laptop won't function and eventually your hardware will suffer over time. I see this all the time, and no matter how often I warn, people don't take it to heart. These are, 90 percent of the time, the same people who come to me later and complain about overheating issues. And usually by then, it's far too late.

[Astronomer]

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

Well, I don't have much Mac experience, but overheating is overheating, regardless of the brand.
In most cases, your computer will have a mechanism to shut itself off immediately if it overheats to the point of near damaging.
But if you're simply just hearing a loud fan kick in, then your fan is just loud, and it's kicking in like normal fans kick in when the computer's temperature rises beyond a specific level.
But if your fan sounds like it's abnormally loud, and you're hearing some obvious signs of wrongness, you may just have to change out your fan.
Usually that's a better step to try first, as it's cheaper than just assuming your computer is overheating and buying something more expensive for it.

There are also free programs available on the web that can monitor and tell you what temperature your main hardware is running at.
You can then compare your readings to the average safe temperatures that you'll undoubtedly also be able to find on the web.


Either way, one obvious rule I like to observe, that I always see people ignore, is:
Never put your laptop directly on your bed or any like-surface. The venting underneath the laptop won't function and eventually your hardware will suffer over time. I see this all the time, and no matter how often I warn, people don't take it to heart. These are, 90 percent of the time, the same people who come to me later and complain about overheating issues. And usually by then, it's far too late.

Cool, thanks for the advice. Seriously Freebase, you're so clever.. what would I do without your quality tech advice?! Anywho, I guess it's just a case of having a really loud fan because I haven't noticed any other problems per se other than the fan going crazy. And after doing a search on the net, other owners of Macbooks seem to report the same thing.

And yeah, I rarely put my laptop on soft surfaces like my bed, but now that you've said that I'm definitely going to avoid it! And hopefully elevating it off the desk with my makeshift 'stand' will help, too.

I might check out some of those monitoring programs or go to the Apple store and ask them if my fan sounds normal (even though most of the store people there are twats who pretend to know stuff when they really don't, grr.)

Anyway, thanks for the input!

[noise]

do you have any pets in the house? cat hair makes quick work of heat sinks and fan housings.

not sure how easy it is to dig into a macbook, but i make a bi-annual ritual out of cleaning my laptop. remove the cover, disassemble the fans, blow out the massive chunks of dust with canned air, and clean everything down with diluted alcohol and cotton swabs.

after an hour's work or so, the thing runs cool and quiet for another few months before it gets gummed up again...

[NumberNineDream]

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

You're either browsing through a proxy server located in the Netherlands, or your Internet Service Provider is based there.

I forgot to reply to that.

Well the problem is, that sometimes the I.P address somehow changes and shows that I'm in Leb, so I get these errors that I have "Wrong I.P adress" or something.
It usually is annoying when I restart my computer and get all the sites in Dutch, so I have to guess how I can change the language back.

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by NumberNineDream

I forgot to reply to that.

Well the problem is, that sometimes the I.P address somehow changes and shows that I'm in Leb, so I get these errors that I have "Wrong I.P adress" or something.
It usually is annoying when I restart my computer and get all the sites in Dutch, so I have to guess how I can change the language back.

How are you normally viewing your IP info?
Assuming you're not already doing it directly from your gateway device (router), try the following:

If you're using DSL, try logging into your router to see what your WAN IP address is. The WAN IP is the one your Internet Service Provider leases to you for a certain amount of time, and is the IP address you and the other computers behind your router will use to communicate over the internet. If that IP address is not the IP address you're having issues with, then you can safely assume that you're using a dynamic proxy service outside your ISP, in which case you just need to disable proxy wherever you have it enabled.

To log into your router, simply go to the command prompt and type IPCONFIG and enter. Your gateway address is the address of the inside network interface of your router. That will be the address you put in the URL bar of your browser. Entering that IP should bring you to the software interface of your router.


Ya know something, I just remembered that when I was in Iraq, there was a civilian satellite internet thing set up and there was a bunch of access points set up for wireless. Well, the ISP providing the service was based out of Germany, so our IPs were obviously german registered. Every time I'd go to certain sites, the default language would be in German. I never could get around that except by using a U.S. Proxy server, but your transfer speeds can be lower that way.

Anyway, if you find out that you're not using any kind of proxy service and the IP your ISP gives you is the only one you're communicating with, then your IP should always be registered with your ISP's region. If this is the case, and you're getting odd IP addresses, your ISP is doing something fishy and it's something you need to contact them about.

Which ISP are you using, btw?
AKA.. what company is providing your internet service.
And is it DSL, Cable, or Dialup?