To be honest that seems like the best solution. I can either send it back to the repair techs for free and wait the two weeks it took them last time to do a 10min job, or I can pay and get an instant solution. 'Cause at present I really can't afford to be without my laptop.

Suddenly, my computer loses the ability to click links or functions of the browser (Firefox). It took me forever to get here.

I feel like its a virus or something like that. It could be a processor issue, but it happened so suddenly that it makes me concerned. Any help?

EDIT: Whats even more odd is that when the screen "locks up"* if I alt-tab to another screen then immediately jump back I have free range - it works as normal. But if you're on the page for a few seconds, nothing works again.

*its almost as if it glosses over the page. Like you're looking at a PDF. I can mouse-wheel up and down but thats it. Refreshing the page occasionally works, but otherwise nothing.

This may sound like a dumb question, but have you tried restarting it?

Also, what OS are you using?

Not dumb at all. Actually I just did restart and things seem to be functioning much better now.

XP home by the way.

Edit:

While I'm in here, I'm thinking of buying a new computer, (Since this is an '02 Dell). I sorta want a Dual-Core Processor, a half decent graphics card, and I need MS Publisher for work. What do you think something like that would run me? (I'd like a terrabite of storage but I'll take what I can get).

I don't know if anyone can help me with this minor problem but my laptop is barely two months old and the back light key and the eco system key aren't working. When I try to turn off the back light, it goes dim but then lights back up again. It's so weird because I barely ever use the back light key. I turned it on last night and now I haven't been able to turn it off now. I went to the toshiba support site to look around and see if I could get help with it but I don't know. I want them to fix this. I'm pretty sure I'm still under the limited warranty.

I have been having an annoying problem with my internet. I frequently get bad latency. I usually have just done the windows connection troubleshooter then it is fine for a while, but it happens so often that I need to just fix it permanently. Here is a log from said troubleshooter:

What's your signal strength look like? Wireless access points have what you can call "gears"... If you're close and your signal strength is excellent, the AP is going to be communicating at full capacity and you'll get a lot of throughput. Further away, it has to drop some of the compression algorithms and operate at slower speeds because the quality of the RF connection to your computer's wireless card can't support it.

If you're at full signal strength and still having this problem, then that's probably not the issue.

Also, I noticed that your access point has no authentication and is unsecured. Could it be possible that your neighbors are all leeching off your internet? If so, they could definitely be sucking down your bandwidth. You can check this by logging into your wireless router and checking to see who's connected to it. Connected client lists are standard in wireless APs, so you shouldn't have any issues determining such. If this is the case, you'll want to enable security on your AP, using anything but WEP, which is easily cracked. WPA2 with TKIP is fine.

If this isn't your issue, we can explore something else, like updating your wireless card's driver, etc.., but typically those two scenarios are the most common.

it's probably my signal strength. it's been at 2/5 bars for as long as I can remember. should I make a foil range booster thingy?

Foil range booster? I wouldn't go about arbitrarily adding length to the antenna(s). They're precisely cut at a specific length to account for the length (or a portion of it) of a 2.4ghz radio wave in its optimal phase. If it's not at that length or a multiple of it, you'll won't be doing yourself any favors. A better idea is to actually position the antenna(s) on the AP so that the RF propagation pattern extends more towards you. If your access point is on the same floor as you, you'll want the antenna(s) sticking straight up, vertically, as the RF propagates horizontally outward sorta like a donut. If the antennas are laying horizontally, all you're doing is wasting DB giving the roof a really good internet connection. But if you were upstairs, this is obviously a better idea.
If you're both on ground level, you should be aware that RF hates ground, and is physically repelled by it. Try putting the AP high up on a shelf or something and see if there's any difference.

So are you sure there isn't anyone leeching off your internet? Or are you the one leeching? hehe.. if it's the latter, then I'm afraid there isn't much you can do, since it's likely that a lot of other people are doing the same thing and the problem is simply one of limited bandwidth. Short of going over to that person's house and requesting that they purchase faster internet, there's little you can do.

I was thinking more along the lines of This. it's not adding length.

I will try to aim my antennae towards my computer now though. they should be aimed at a 90% angle towards my computer?

no leeching is occurring. I have checked it at random times when my latency went to crap.

edit: re-positioning my antennae boosted it to 3/5 bars.

Hmm... might as well give the antenna thing a try. Can't hurt anything as long as it isn't physically touching the metallic interior of the AP's antenna. If you're on the same floor with the AP, the antennas should be vertical, 90 degrees to the floor, like the long part of an L. You don't have to worry about angling them towards the 90 degree direction of your computer, as the antennas are omni-directional and the propagation pattern is vertically "thick" enough so that you'll be in the 1st fresnel zone regardless, but by all means, experiment.

Here's something interesting;
When you're installing windows 7, you could run into the problem that every step takes an awful long time to load. Nothing happens or 5 to 10 minutes and all of a sudden stuf works again, until the next step. I've just been staring at 'setup is starting' for 10 minutes and I figured that I didn't want my whole setup to go that way, so I did some googling.
Turned out the solution is turning off your floppydrive in the bios (!).
People had similar problems with hooked up cardreaders and iPods.
Apparently 7 setup checks for stuff on every drive every now and then. Which is annoying.

So remember that; Slow Windows 7 setup? And I don't mean sluggish, I mean slow as in, nothing happens for long periods of time, no HDD action, no CD action; Turn off your drives with removable storage!

What do you mean, when Windows 7 is being installed into the computer, or when you turn the computer on and the OS is loading?

And people still have floppy drives? O_o

When windows 7 is installing. The installation itselves is really really slow then.
And what you ask reminds me of another thing: If you have an asus laptop and it boots ****ing slow, check if there's a card in the cardreader :D

I use floppy drives, yes. I mess around a bit with old Laptops and MSX computers.
And if I remove the floppy drive there's a hole in my computer.
I will replace it with a cardreader soon, though. I'll juse an external usb floppy drive.

Our desktop computer has a floppy drive, but it's almost 10 years old! I stopped using floppies when USB flash drives became more popular. You can store like 1 million times the information on those things :D

I may look into getting an external floppy drive, because I have a huge collection of floppies that have all kinds of old, 8-bit type games on them.

google 'abandonware'.
Thank me later.
When you discover that these old games won't work on later windowses, get yourself a Dell GX1 with a Voodoo III like I have done. It's great :D.

And I use the floppies only to install old computers.
Haven't got a clue what else I should use them for

Cool! All kinds of old games on that site :)

I really don't know what else you'd be able to use a floppy disk for. A 3 1/2 inch disk can really only hold about 200 MB at maximum capacity.

Hahaha, oh my goodness I'm growing old, people are forgetting about floppies :D.
A floppy can hold up to 2mb at a maximum. Usually it's just 1.38mb formatted ;).
There's no way you're going to get 200mb's onto a floppy.

But yes, that's all I use them for.
To copy old games and software to computers who don't have access to internet themselves.

Sorry, I meant to say 2 MB's! I guess I was thinking about something else when I wrote that

You were thinking of loads of MB's :D.
I hated diskettes from day one. I always had problems with them.
Even a new box of premium brand diskettes always had a few dead ones in them.
5 1/4" Floppies FTW!

Is there a web browser that gives you an option to have it determine resizing done when pictures load? I'm sure this was confusing so let me say this...

When I go to a page and 8 douchebags have photos of horse ****s in their signature, and the web pages jumps around like a caffinated toddler, and I go trying to click **** in posts, I always end up going to sites for Hello Kitty 4 Chan reviews and subscription offers for the ****ing Economist.

Since I cannot eliminate peoples love of horse ****s, can I have a browser account for the size a photo will be when it finally loads?

you could use adblock plus and block that posters image.

I second this. Great idea if it's only some isolated cases.

@ Bigtree, if you have Firefox just search for the Adblock Plus addon and install it into Firefox. Then when you restart Firefox, make sure the little stop sign icon with ABP on it is red, then any time you see a horse penis or whatever, just right click it and there should be a "block image" option.

Not sure if ABP is for any other browsers, but I'm sure any sort of ad blocking addon would have the same basic functions.

Ghehe, if you don't have firefox, get firefox :D.

adblock is on chrome too.

there ya go.

Okay everyone, I'm in need of assistance. My computer doesn't like videos. Whether it be in a browser or an actual file on my computer, it just isn't a fan. My computer hardly ever freezes because of videos on YouTube, but if it's full screen, then you can bet that it will. I've tried a myriad of solutions, but nothing seems to work. I read somewhere about manually inputting more virtual memory. Right now it says that there is 3.23 gigs allotted, but 4.4 gigs recommended. I'm not saying this is a definite solution, but just something that I noticed. Help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks all!

How much RAM is in your graphics card?

Judging by what it says in the control panel, 3 GB.

You sure that's not your system RAM?
Unless you have a really high end graphics card, it's not 3 GB.

No, it is my system RAM. Had no clue how to find out, but just Googled it.

Total available graphics memory: 1.05 GB
Dedicated video memory: 64 MB (doesn't look very good)
System video memory: 0 MB (neither does this)
Shared system memory: 1.05 GB

Hrmmm... I'm not sure how it works in your system (Mac, I'm supposing), but I know that dedicated video memory is pretty important in a PC scenario, as it's the only memory available to the GPU for rendering. I'm assuming your GPU is mounted to your motherboard, and those aren't really gaming scenarios, but if your system is telling you that you have 1.05 GB of available graphics memory, then I'd just go with that, which is more than adequate for playing a video fullscreen without any problems.

Now, when you say "freezes", do you mean the entire computer freezes, or just the video? I wonder if there may be something else going on. Either way, if you're on a Mac, I can only go so far with this.

Nope! PC. It's a Dell. I can post the system info if that's relevant. Yeah that's right, I know how to find system info. I can PM you the instructions if you'd like. And yeah the whole computer freezes. The "busy" light, as I like to call it, lights up and stays lit until it finally unfreezes. Then it just comes on and off sporadically.

Yea, complete system specs would be awesome. Just post here.

Dell Inspiron 531S
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ 2.30 GHz
Memory (RAM): 3.00 GB
32-Bit Operating System

Hmmm... I went to Dell's spec sheet for that model, and it doesn't even list the graphics memory. But it does say that it's an integrated chip, which I suspected. If it really is only a 64MB capacity, then that could very well be your issue... but it begs the question... is this problem a recent thing, or has it always been this way with your computer?

If it's only recent, it's not because of your video memory. But if it has always been this way, then I'd be inclined to say it is. Especially if you have a large monitor with high resolution.

I do have a large monitor, but it's only happened recently. Well I wouldn't say recently, but maybe for the last year.

It's really hard to test which component is the culprit without being able to change them out. I mean, a component can simply be going bad, or it could be a software issue. Have you, just for the sake of it, tried doing the normal clean-up type stuff like defragging, making sure you have adequate storage space, cleaning up all the temp files and cleaning out the registry, virus scanning, etc?

In Windows, the cause of 90 percent of its problems are simply due to how susceptible it is to being used as a cesspool. Standard, every-day users are usually the ones who have the most problems with this, because they ordinarily don't know what to look out for. But the remaining 10 percent could very well be hardware issues. They're a lot more rare, but all hardware issues are inevitable after a certain point.

To me, it just seems like you don't really have enough video RAM to run the video, and if your integrated graphics card really does share resources with the system, then I'm inclined to think that you simply have too much other crap trying to utilize that system simultaneously. I would be willing to eat the hats of my entire neighborhood if a fresh install of the OS and all the relevant drivers didn't solve your problem.

And if it didn't, then it would be obvious that the issue is in the hardware.
I'm not suggesting that wiping should be the first choice... but maybe it would be wise to try and get your computer back to the way it was before you started having the issue. At the very least, you'll then have an idea about what's causing it... software, or hardware.

Oh, and also try changing your resolution in windows to the lowest setting, and trying out a video in full screen. Try this first and see if there's any difference.

I was discussing this via PM. Seems like K-lite codec pack is causing troubles when playing video on the PC and Flash is causing troubles when playing video's through a browser.

I just got a PM from cawl... thingy telling me his PC keeps sounding like it's loading.
Reading the information above I figure it's not like the PC is too old or there's not enough memory in it.
The only thing I can think now is: It's really time for a reinstall, this PC's ****ed.

Nah man, I run video's on an old P4 with 1,5gb of ram and 32mb onboard video. 3 gigs of ram and onboard video is more than enough to play video smoothly. As far as the other specs go, it should be a piece of cake for that PC to run video smoothly.

As I said, there are some probs with codecs and flash player, but I am afraid you're right in saying this PC is running a lot of stuff at the same time.
I think that a quick view of the task manager will be very interesting :D