I've only got a pet dog and he doesn't have much hair... lol.

Yeah I've taken my macbook apart before, they make it incredibly difficult to dismantle though so it's a bit of pain... but I will certainly give it a go more often clean it up inside regularly.

It's why I love my ginormous monstrosity of a desktop computer.
I can practically crawl inside it and clean it.

...so apparently i have this nasty cookie on my computer which gives me some nice ads every twenty minutes and makes my browser slow as fuck. i tried clearing it using an anti-virus program (AVG) and firefox's built-in controls, no such luck. any ideas?

Spybot - Search & Destroy - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Ad-Aware Free Anti-Malware - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Both free.

i've tried both programs in the past, they just exacerbated things. plus i think they come with spyware to begin with.

Have you tried tracing the file to your registry?

Try scanning it with ClamWin. It's a free, no bullsh!t anti-virus. I've had it for a while now and it does the job for me

Download ClamWin Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows

In your firewall you can always block all traffic to and from the domain where the advertisements originate.

Or, if you use Firefox, there's a great addon called AdBlockPlus that um... blocks all ads.

Freeeeeeeeeebase, you gots to help me :(

I was writing a post, and now my screens smaller...
Like everythings magnified. and the letterings huge.
I feel like I'm supposed to be blind.

Try Ctrl+mousewheel down, if ya did what I think ya did.

I don't have a mouse :(. I have a laptop, but it doesn't have one of those little scroll things on the thing.

Well try Ctrl and either + or -

My hero!!

Ahem so...

I've been trying to reinstall a game on my computer for various reasons, but when I try to uninstall it it pops up with an error. I looked up the problem in technical support on the game website and it said when the game is in the computer to run setup.exe. However, when I run setup.exe an error tells me to go to the control panel to install or configure system components. I tried to find a way to get setup.exe to work but I couldn't figure one out. Any ideas?

Have you tried going to Control Panel > Add/Remove programs > and uninstalling from there?

Yes... it doesn't appear in Add/Remove Programs!

You could do it the old fashioned way:

Delete the folder containing the installed game and all its components (C:\Program Files\Your Game), then open up regedit and delete all the keys related to the game. If you're uncomfortable with mucking around in your registry, you can get the free program CCleaner and run the registry cleaner after you delete the game folder, and it will show you all the now obsolete keys associated with the game and give you the option to get rid of them. It's important that you do get rid of the associated keys though, as they will probably screw with your reinstallation of the game.

Of course, before you decide to do all that, you may want to go to your game's folder in C:\Program Files\Your Game and look to see if there's an uninstaller, which in Windows will probably be called Unwise or Uninstall. If it's there, simply run it. If it's there and running it doesn't work, then do what the previous paragraph says.
(in either scenario, you may still want to download and install CCleaner, as uninstallers are notorious for leaving registry keys behind)
After that, restart your computer for grins and giggles, then go ahead with installing a fresh copy of your game.

Hmm thanks. I have looked around for an uninstaller, however when I try it and error pops up. And..... I already did delete all the folders to the game already. I just must have not deleted everything, so I'll try your CCleaner suggestion as luckily I already have it installed:)

Well... if you already deleted the game and all its folders, then running an uninstaller isn't going to work, because there's nothing to uninstall... but definitely check around to make sure you got all the game stuff deleted.
Definitely run CCleaner and get those registry keys out of there though.

I meant I tried to use the uninstaller before deleting the folders because that's how I normally uninstall a game, but an error message appeared. Following the "technical support" advice on the website did nothing to help, so I tried deleting all the folders. The only problem was when I put the game disk in the men would come up, only it couldn't launch or do anything. But it wasn't completely uninstalled I guess. So I hope CCleaner will help with that.

Let us know if cleaning the registry helps with that.

When I try to play music, is sounds really slow and stretched out, like it's skipping.
What's wrong with it?
>.<

Sounds like maybe your sound card is set to the wrong sampling rate.
Go to your sound card's settings and verify that the sampling rate is set at 44.1khz. If it's not, set it to that.
If it is, then there may be something going on with your music player. Check the settings of your music player to verify that everything is normal. Look out for any settings that may indicate playback speed.
If you see any settings that say "time stretching" (although I doubt you will), then ensure that it is not activated.

Let me know if that sorts you.


P.S.
Oh, and if you're still having the issue, restart your computer. (that magically solves problems sometimes.)

How do I get to the sound card settings?
I tried restarting my computer. It didnt work.
Playback speed?
>.<

Edit:
Okay, it's not only the music, it's all of the sound. When you click something, it sounds like a long click or three clicks instead of just one.
Stuff like that.
Does that change anything?

It doesn't appear to have:(

Well... yea sorta.
I'm thinking it may be a sound driver issue instead. Originally I though this was just limited to music playback.

Do you have a cd that has drivers for your hardware? It should have come with your computer. If not, do the following: (windows)

-Click start
-right click "my computer"
-click "manage"
-on the right, scroll to Sound and expand it
-Look for your sound card's name, and tell me what it is.
-Let me know which version of Windows you're using (Vista / XP)

When you do that, I'll go find the latest driver for your sound card and send you the link, along with instructions on how to uninstall your current driver and install the updated one.

If your problem is a driver problem, that should solve it.

What's the name of your Game?

It works now.
You're wonderful.

Um... what did you do? lol

Lolol I restarted the computer again. :wavey:

lmao!
See? I'm telling ya, the almighty restart is an expert at accidentally solving problems.

Well, good stuff.
But if it starts happening all the time, you may want to go ahead with updating your sound card driver, as drivers are software and are definitely prone to being corrupted.

Say what?

Nothin'.
Just let me know if it happens again and restarting doesn't fix it.

Kayy thanks.

Oblivion. I looked here: Bethesda Softworks, but when I tried to run setup.exe it said I needed to install and configure system components. Do you know a way to fix this?

Well, I did a bit of Googling and apparently Bethesda's installer/uninstaller has a huge bug in Oblivion. Thankfully it never happened to me with Fallout 3.
Anyway, from the looks of it, you're far from the only one with the same exact problem.
The fixes I came across were varied, but I really don't have the time to consolidate all the information I found even in the first page of Google results.

You may want to type the following in google: Oblivion uninstall error

Do a little research and see if you can zero in on at least 3 different solutions.
I wish I could help more, but this is clearly a developer bug that can only be solved via trial and error... You just have to find out what works, and the best way to do that is by researching.

Ok thanks man.

what do you guys use to play music on your computer? i am getting sick of mediamonkey being buggy. i previously had itunes but it is a resource hog. i need something that I use to sync my ipod with.

if you don't mind a bit of a learning curve, try foobar2000. it's very, very powerful. you need to install an addon to sync with your ipod, but once you do, you'll get a lot more flexibility than any other app will offer. you can embed album art, convert, and even retag files as you sync.

but like i said, there is a learning curve. since you can customize the whole interface, it takes a while to get it set up how you like.

here's my config, as an example of what it can do (album art, artist image, and artist bio all gathered manually):

http://imgkk.com/i/oUaB7h.png

my windows media player (11) refused to open, even after restarting. so i uninstalled it, which apparently just rolls it back to the last version. so i click media player after i restart and it goes through the installation options for WMP 10. after finishing it says an internal application error has occured, and it says that for each subsequent attempt at opening the program.

i downloaded foobar but a large portion, if not all of my files' tags are ****ed up and i hardly understand how to use it.

edit: reinstalled wmp 11 and i'm back to the initial problem.