The Official Computer Tech Support Thread

[sidewinder]

Hey Freebase...just thought I'd stop in and update you on my PC, since you helped me so much:

I decided early this week, after not doing anything with it last weekend, to just wipe it out and do a fresh XP install. So I booted from the CD in preparation, then saw there was an option to repair an existing install, so I thought I'd give that a shot. This got me back into Windows and I was hopeful, but there were still bogus antivirus popups. However, this allowed me to go ahead and back up the remaining few things onto my external drive, so at that point why the hell NOT do a clean install? So I did it yesterday...feels kind of nice. I'll be bringing the PC home tonight and getting back in working order this weekend.

It was a nice break not having the internet at home though, hope I don't fall back into over-usage.

[sidewinder]

I spoke too soon!

Now I am dealing with a bunch of missing drivers. Couldn't even set up my damn internet connection at home...it was therefore useless AGAIN, and I brought it back to work. Slow progress getting the drivers I need. Got the net running (via office connection...who knows what'll happen next time I bring it home), now can't seem to get audio working...gotta call it a night. And I thought I was done. Goes to show it's the first time I've done a clean system install. I don't have time for this! I feel like tossing it and buying a new one. If I could...I would.

[adidasss]

I seem to remember someone (Freebase?) saying something about an automatic backup of your music libraries to an external drive. I mentioned something about it to my boss and was wondering if someone could repeat/explain how that would work, the search brought up nout...

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by sidewinder

I spoke too soon!

Now I am dealing with a bunch of missing drivers. Couldn't even set up my damn internet connection at home...it was therefore useless AGAIN, and I brought it back to work. Slow progress getting the drivers I need. Got the net running (via office connection...who knows what'll happen next time I bring it home), now can't seem to get audio working...gotta call it a night. And I thought I was done. Goes to show it's the first time I've done a clean system install. I don't have time for this! I feel like tossing it and buying a new one. If I could...I would.

Yea, any time you do a clean install you'll need to put your specific hardware drivers in yourself as Windows has no way of knowing what hardware you'll be using, therefore the drivers won't be included in the OS installation CD.
You should only need the following drivers:

CHIPSET driver (important, if you value any kind of performance at all)
Video card driver
Audio card driver
Ethernet controller driver

Anything else, such as third-party software stuff will be installed when you install the software.

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by adidasss

I seem to remember someone (Freebase?) saying something about an automatic backup of your music libraries to an external drive. I mentioned something about it to my boss and was wondering if someone could repeat/explain how that would work, the search brought up nout...

I think I had mentioned Syncback in the past, although there are other programs out there that do the same thing.
It's basically a small program you download for free and you set up a backup profile, which allows you to select any directories on any drives as the source, and any directories on any other physical drive (like an external) as the destination. You run the backup profile and it will copy all the directories you specified into the destination, and they'll be set up in the same way.

After that, you create a synchronize profile, using the same source and destination, but this time you set it up so that when anything changes in either the source or the destination directories, running the profile applies those changes to both.
There are different ways you can set it up, but the idea is that any time you add new music (or whatever else) to the source, when the synchronize profile is run, just the new stuff gets added to the destination. And if something gets deleted from the source by accident, when the synchronize profile is run, the file(s) will be restored to the source.

There are different profiles you can set up, and you can also schedule them to run at certain times. Doing this will always ensure that you have a mirror copy of whatever directories (or even an entire drive) backed up on an external or other physical drive, should something happen.

If you're interested, here's a tutorial from their website:
http://www.2brightsparks.com/tutoria...tbackup/1.html
There are also other tutorials you can check out pertaining to different scenarios.

[adidasss]

Thanks meeyt!

[adidasss]

Oh shyyyy...it doesn't appear to be free after all. I'll give it a go and see if the boss is willing to spend 30$ on it...:\

[Freebase Dali]

Originally Posted by adidasss

Oh shyyyy...it doesn't appear to be free after all. I'll give it a go and see if the boss is willing to spend 30$ on it...:\

It is. Get the SE version, not pro.

Edit:
Hmmm... hold on a sec and let me find the right thing for you.
I got mine for free, and I'm pretty sure I didn't pirate it.

[Freebase Dali]

Ok.. Adidasss, here's the freeware version:

(first on the list)
2BrightSparks | Freeware

[adidasss]

Oh sweet. Thanks...