Yeah, I know. I hate the bloody things too! My Zen does me fine, when out and about, but I needed something to allow me to play the music at home, an amp of some sort, preferably one that charges, and when my redundancy came through in 2009 I got this bad boy
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...mbQE8oBuXY7A07

but all of its cool functions (scrolling text, alarm, album art etc) are only accessible to an ipod. Basically, it's built for ipod though it will accept other mp3 players --- they just plug in at the back via a 3.5 mm jack, and it becomes a glorified speaker. I found this to be the case when I went looking for something for my Zen to play through --- almost 100% of the machines were made with the ipod in mind. This was the best, and cost at the time 240 Euro, so I had to get an ipod to justify the price.

I'm working on that program now thanks, though it seems to have led to my having to download ANOTHER of their progs, as this one sees nothing on my ipod. At all.

I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks for answering anyway and trying to help.

Bloody Apple! :mad:

Thanks anyway Plankton but that was less than useless.
After using their "doctor" program, it was happy to tell me that ALL of the files were "corrupted" to the point where the ipod is no longer recognised as such. Sigh.

Edit: One good thing is that the whole ipod is now seen as empty, so technically, once I can get the thing recognised I can start putting on just the albums I want, so maybe in a weird way it did work.

Thanks anyway.
If this fails then I'm afraid it's itunes once again... dear god no! :eek:

Crap! I was hoping that wouldn't be the case.

What kind of iPod do you have TH? And what year is it from?

It's a 5th gen Nano, Jansz, from 2009 (at least, that's when I bought it) --- one of those green metallic deals...
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...j46O8iLWbSZ15R

I was actually getting ready to finally open and use the Classic 160 gig I got for my birthday about three years ago now, and this was the first step in transferring the music, new albums I wanted to listen to.
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...YV0Vpt6bCNR_UW

my laptop is being weird. Sometimes it's letting me comment on fb status's and sometimes it doesn't. When I go to press enter to send the comment it just acts like the enter button would in like, a word document. Any help welcome. It's fucking annoying.

Ah, conveniently enough that's the exact kind I have! Let me see if I can figure anything out with mine. You're on a Windows machine without iTunes, right?

Yeah, windows 7 and currently using MediaMonkey when needed.
Thanks for the help, but as I mentioned the program that Plankton pointed me towards, while it didn't help me delete anything, sort of did, as it refused to recognise and so in effect erased my ipod. Nothing else could see music on it either, like MM, so I just loaded up the albums I wanted onto what was, to all intents and purposes, a blank ipod, and it seems to be working now.

Of course, I lost everything that was on it originally, but I have all my music triple-firewall-backedup anyway, so that wasn't a big deal.

I'd be interested to see though (without you wasting your time unnecessarily) if you can find a solution, as I may need to do this again, and when I'm using the Classic eventually, losing 160 gb of music as opposed to 16, well, it's annoying but a bigger problem, even with a backup.

Thanks Jansz.

I'm pretty sure you can do what you are asking for with foobar2000: Components Repository - iPod manager (if you are willing to make a switch to foobar)

I have had instances where my iPod corrupted on me though (when I used mediamonkey), and nothing is better for that than iTunes unfortunately. If you are afraid of it leaving crap behind, you can use an advanced uninstaller (it scans for remnants in your files and registry).

Thanx Eric, but I tried Foobar before and as it's basically command-line I wasn't that happy with it. I think the problem, as I say, has been sorted now, albeit in an unconventional and unintended manner.

I just hate the dominance of ipod: Creative make perfectly good players --- my Zen X-Fi is my go-to player of choice --- but almost no-one (including Creative, who do make a dock but for the IPOD!) makes any sort of dock that will run it, at least as other than a third-party also-ran. Believe me, when looking I really did search for anything that wasn't specifically tailored to ipod that was even close to what I was looking for and could find nothing. Basically I was forced to buy an ipod, which is something I will forever resent.

I use a Sansa Clip, but I didn't care about docking it.

I'm using a Sansa Clip 4 gb one right now. I was super worried the first time I formatted it so I could put some new music on, I was afraid I'd get rid of the software that actually plays the music and it'd just be a 4gb hard drive.

I don't think there's a dock small enough for a Sansa Clip! :laughing: Great little player though.

Thing is, the likes of the X-Fi and even the ipod have inbuilt speakers, but you might as well be listening with your headphones really for all the good they are. A decent washing machine cycle, hoover or even passing truck will drown it out, that's why I needed the dock. Also needed to keep the thing charged for when I go out (which is a lot less, now).

Anyway, as I say the problem appears to have been resolved, in a kind of accidental way, for now. Thanks to all you guys for your help and input.
:thumb:

So I've been having trouble when trying to access Mediafire recently. Two days ago, I'd started getting an error that says "McAffee Proxy Service Module has stopped working" (yes, I know that I still have McAfee on my computer. I just never bothered to uninstall it). I cannot access Mediafire at the moment, and it will only give me that error when I try to access it. Googling this error revealed that 3 people had asked about this on the same day that I had. So do you guys have any advice when it comes to preventing this error, or is McAfee just crap and I need to uninstall it?

The short answer is that McAfee, like Norton, is a useless resource hog and should be shot, preferably into the sun out of a cannon.

Uninstall and just download MSE instead. It's free, unobtrusive and it works, even if it IS MicroSatan...

When you say MSE, you mean Microsoft Security Essentials, right? I've heard a few good things about that, so I'll try it out.

(I never even bought McAfee by the way. IIRC, it was already installed on my computer when I got it)

I'd recommend using Avast, I've been using it for a few years now and it does the business. Best of all it's free to download.

avast! | Download Free Antivirus Software or Internet Security

Oh my god.

Uninstalling McAfee was probably the best technology-related decision that I've made all year.

My access to the internet is back* and it's a lot faster now. I'll be getting Avast in a few minutes.

*I was using a different computer for the first two posts in this discussion.

Congrats on giving McAfee its marching orders.
I'd still go with Microsoft Security Essentials though: it's pretty seamless and hasn't given me a single problem since I installed it. Don't know about Avast, though I've heard good things. Either will probably do fine.

Thing I hate about McAfee and Norton is that 9/10 times when you buy a new computer they're already installed. And it's like I DON'T WANT THE DAMN THING but then they can be quite hard to uninstall. Damn bundled software! Why not just give us a free but less resource-hungry program? And the sad thing is, a large percentage of non-computer-savvy people will not realise this monster is eating their memory, slowing the PC down, and that any problems they're having could be solved by ditching it.

The only reason I'd rather stray from MSE than Avast is the fact that from Vista and up, it's included in most versions. The reason that's important is malware begins to become customized for it. Not so much in the resistance department, but you generally see a lot more things "masquerading" as something related to the popular AV software out there, and unaware PC users may end up downloading and running something they think is totally safe. And when it comes packed in an OS, there's a very large chance that authors of malware are going to target that sort of thing.

So, effectiveness aside, there's probably a greater likelihood of someone introducing malware onto their system if they're using the most likely anti-malware system, versus using something comparable but not so much in the spotlight.
For that reason alone, users that aren't very "in the know" in regard to computer security should generally opt for equally effective 3rd party AV software, especially if they aren't planning on being vigilant about what they do, despite the promise of being "protected".

Good points. And also users should not assume that just because they pay for something it's going to be better than a free version. Most free AV/Spyware progs these days are as good as, if not better than, ones that can cost hundreds of dollars to the unwary/trusting.

Indeed.

Freebase, can you please direct me to a program that will help me turn a CD music track into an mp3? There is a song I want to put on you tube but the song type isn't supported by a movie maker program. :(

If you have Windows, simply load the CD into your CD bay, open Windows Media Player, and rip the CD to the highest quality WMA. Then download an audio format converter.
Or just google CD to MP3. The first result I got was:
FreeRIP: CD to MP3 Converter, MP3 Converter

I never rip CDs anymore, so I'm sorry if I couldn't be of more help.

Thanks you were very helpful!

So here's a question that I'd pay for help on.

I was downloading movie-player software from what I assume was a german site (another forum I'm on) and while doing it, crazy **** started to also download (or it looked like it was). Given that I couldn't stop it/close it/ect. I just ripped the power sourse out of my computer.

Since then, weird things have been going on. I'll start my computer and it won't get past a certain screen. When I shut it down (manually) and restart, it attempts to repair and ultimately restores things to a previous point.

From there, it always wants to delivery updates upon shutdown. But when I'm actually in using the computer, certain programs work, and certain ones don't. For some reason my iTunes files are there, but when I go to open the actual program it can't find it.

Its as if **** just went haywire and is stuck in an infinite loop of restoration, update, failure.

You've caught something (why would you download a video player, baddies always stuff crap into .exes).

You should do some safe mode antivirus scans and unsafe mode antivirus scans.

If you're using Windows, restore your files back to a point before you downloaded this piece of crap, and it should hopefully sort things out for you.

Also, run your virus/spyware scans

Also, never ever EVER EVER download video player software you're not familiar with, or that isn't known. What was the prog called?
:nono:

Edit: when did you download itunes? It seems like the system has restored to a point before you had the prog. Just d/l it again I'd say.
What else doesn't work? Chances are there are dll files or updates that are required, were downloaded but since your restore are no longer seen. They probably need to be downloaded too.
Make sure you go through the registry and remove all references to this rogue program...

I never usually do, but I figured given that it was German (thats .de right?) that I needed their software. Something like iLevel. I'm on another comp so I'd have to check later.

I wonder how to get it to restore to an earlier point at this time. I believe I asked for December 4th which should be fine but the issue persists.

It should tell you. It'll bring up a dialogue box at the bottom left of which is a box saying "further restore points". Click that and it should show you how far you can go back. If Dec 4 doesn't do it I'd go a week or two further back, depending on what you downloaded since. Remember, anything you did d/l at least in the way of software won't be there, because as far as Restore is concerned it, well, hasn't been downloaded yet.

I can't see any specific s/w called iLevel but you should be able to run most videos on the likes of VLC etc. I wouldn't d/l unless you're sure, and definitely not from a foreign site (was the page in German? I'm assuming it was)...

Yanking the power cord from the wall is probably the reason your computer is all jacked up, and you probably also have a virus in addition to that.
I'm not going to go into detail about how your computer writes to the registry when you're installing something and why you shouldn't power-off during this process (even Windows Update tells you not to shut your computer down during installations), but suffice it to say, it would have been less of a hassle if you had just let the software finish installing, then uninstalled it and run a virus scan.
Because now, you've likely screwed up something important. At this point, you may as well just back up any important data and reinstall the OS. That might seem like a drastic step, but if you did mess something up, no matter how many band-aids you put on this, you're going to live with problems down the line. The safest bet is to just start over again.

Also, if you somehow didn't know this, Windows 7 (assuming that's what you're using) has a backup capability. When you get your computer working nicely after a new install and all your data gets thrown back on it, and everything is perfect, use Windows Backup to create an image of your computer, and store it on an external drive that is large enough to hold it, which will be entirely dependent on how much actual data you have on your computer.
Set a scheduled task to back up your computer and overwrite the previous backup like monthly. This way, should anything ever happen, you simply insert your Windows installation disk and restore to the most recent image, which quite literally puts everything exactly as the way it was during the period that image was taken.
Restoring from a restore point is not that effective. It saves a system state, which means settings and things like that. System restore won't restore your data. So, if you're smart, you'll implement a backup plan that will not only keep your data redundant, but also let you restore it quickly and with minimal effort, which is completely possible by default in Windows 7.

If you don't wanna, then see you next time.

Freebase, will this work for all connected drives, incl external ones? I have three: two 1.5 tbs and and 1 tb, plus the installed one (also a tb) -- will the backup system copy all the data from the four drives (assuming I have something large enough to copy it to)? And does it compress the files, or do you literally have to have 1:1 in terms of data space?

I really should do this: I have such bad luck with PCs it's happened before and will surely happen again.

Thanks
TH

You can dictate which drives you want to back up separately, or have them all included in one backup. I would recommend doing each drive separately, because it's not likely they'll all fail at once, and if/when a single drive fails, you won't have to restore everything, and just restore that one drive instead.

As far as backing up external drives, I would assume it would. I don't use externals all that often, so I haven't tried, but it will be apparent when you go to run a backup. The external(s) will either be included in the list of what to back up or not.

Regarding backup compression, Windows will compress whatever is able to be compressed. Whether it will make a significant difference will depend on what you have on your system. If you don't like the size of the backup(s), you can try to compress the image after the fact with something like Winrar or 7zip, where you can modify the compression settings, but this will require you to have to decompress before restoring from the image. Whether or not additional compression will make a significant difference is subject to experiment.

HTH

Well ****.

Alright I'll have to find those discs.

Thanks.

Question for Freebase (or anyone): is there any way to make a normal CDRW disc writeable as a drive? In other words, to be able to save files (text) to it from within a wp prog rather than have to keep going into nero or whatever and re-burning the files? I want to use it as a removable backup for my journals, as the files have a habit of getting corrupted on the hdd, so this would be a way of ensuring I always had one working copy.

I remember it was possible to do something like set a CD up as a virtual drive once, way back in the mists of my youth, when recordable CDs were just getting going. But is it still possible, or practical now?

Thx

PS I tried it with a pen drive but somehow the same thing tends to happen... :confused: :banghead: the amount of times I've had to rewrite reviews...!

I attempted something similar with a Verbatim BD25. It worked fine (albeit slowly), then I started having corruption issues with the files after a large number of writes. I recommend something like dropbox over a CD-RW.

Must say that looks good Eric. Is the free option enough? I don't want to be paying a sub or anything if I can avoid it, but if the free one does very little maybe I should? How does it work with documents? Is this dropbox folder added as a location to save?

I think the free version holds 5gb. I haven't used it before, but I assume you access the "dropbox" either through your browser or a program. Anything you drop into that is now available anywhere else you have that browser/program/login info.

You can definitely use a rewritable disc like you would use a thumbdrive. If you have Windows 7 you can simply insert the disc, and Windows will prompt you it you want to burn files to it, then it will give you an option to do what you're talking about.

Alternately, using something like Eric said is also an option, and a lot easier if you don't mind having your documents in the cloud. I use Google Drive, but you can use Dropbox as well. If all you're doing is storing documents, then you should be good with the amount of space you get for free accounts.

In both scenarios, you'll need to install the free client program on any computer that you're going to be syncing (uploading) from. It will allow you to specify a folder on that computer that, when a document is added to it or changed, the client program updates it on the server in the cloud. Then you can download that file from any other computer simply by logging into the site, and/or by installing the client program on that computer as well, and specifying the folder to sync to. In Dropbox's case, you would just go to Dropbox.com and log in, then you'll have access to your things. In the case of Google Drive, it's integrated into Google Chrome, so if you already use that it will make things pretty simple. In either case, if you have a synced folder on multiple computers, provided that the client is running on both ends, the files will sync all the way between folders without you needing to log in to the site, which is the major plus side of this kind of thing.

Thanks guys! Well I think even with the amount of writing I do it'll be some time before I'm up to a gig, never mind 5, so the free option would seem to be the one to look at.

I guess I can do both, as a sort of double-protection. Thanks for the info on the CDs Freebase, and thanks Eric for the rec for Dropbox: I'll look into that tomorrow.