Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 May 28

= May 28 =

CPU fan doesn't work
Ok my fan doesn't work. Please tell me how to get it to work before my cpu explodes. i opened up the box and put a real fan there to see if it'll help. And can someone please tell me how to find my cpu tempreature? When I start up my computer it tells me the cpu temp for about a few secs but then i dont know anymore. Usually this tempreature is about 20 degress celcius but today it was at 68 when i restarted my computer.Taida 01:45, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a plethora of tools to read the sensor, for example http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php. You can also read the value in the bios menu, but the cpu is unsually cool in that case, because it is idle.


 * If a CPU gets too hot it will start to compute wrong results, which usually causes the computer to freeze or reboot. If it heats up further, it can be destroyed.

Can you tell me how to get it to work? --Taida 12:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Buy a new fan? It should be a simple replacement job. Splintercellguy 13:51, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Those fans can be lubricated, and they'll run again for a little while (days, weeks, maybe a few months), but the fix never holds for long; it's a lot easier to just buy a new fan and get another five years or so out of the fan. Unplug and unmount the old fan and take it to your nearest computer shop (preferably, a little one that knows what they're doing rather than a CompUSA, Circuit City, or a Best Buy). They should have a fan of an identical size and connector, but if the connector varies a bit, you/they should be able to connect the old leadset and connector to the new fan. At all times when the computer case is open, please exercise caution against zapping your computer with electrostatic discharge.


 * Atlant 17:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If you do decide to lubricate it, note the little hole the oil goes in is often hidden underneath the label. Most fans have been designed to be serviced in this fashion on a regular basis and can be kept running a very long time so long as you're willing to oil them regularly.  My grandpa has a furnace fan from the 40s that he kept working through the 90s by oiling it yearly.  Since discovering that hole, I've never thrown a fan away.


 * The hassle, of course, is that often the failed fan is buried deep in a power supply and substantial disassembly is required simply to reach the fan. In that case, a new five-year fan is a much better tradeoff than a (lets be generous) one year relubrication of the old fan. Computer fans are just too cheap to waste your labo[u]r upon. Plus, if they fail again and are not rapidly repaired (again and again), they may cause some very expensive components to overheat.


 * I've certainly oiled a few fans, but have decided that it's just not worth it in the long run.


 * Of course large motors with non-permanently-lubricated bearings are well worth keeping oiled. But the presence of oil cups and oil felts usually identify the ones worth oiling.


 * Atlant 12:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Printing
Hello. Can I print on scrap lined, writing paper with an HP Deskjet 3420? Will it harm the printer? Thanks. --Mayfare 01:54, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If it's the correct size and isn't too thin, it should be fine.

How do I know that the paper is too thin? --Mayfare 19:29, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't worry about it too much. Any kind of "normal" paper works in a printer just fine. The sort of thing you have to worry about putting into a printer is plastic stuff, like overhead transparencies. --Tugbug 20:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If you can write on it with ink and see what you've written on the other side, best use something thicker. I mean, you *could* use it, but it mightn't look as nice.

Oh, the blueness
My monitor's picture recently went blue. That is, that which is supposed to be white, is a greenish blue. Solutions? Comments? All are welcome! Someoneinmyheadbutit&#39;snotme 02:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Let me guess. CRT monitor? Probably one of the colour guns has gone. Either that or your colour temperature has spontaneously reset itself, but it seems like it's the former.

Unplug your video cable from the back of the monitor, plug it back in and fasten the screws. Unplug the video cable from the back of the computer, plug it back in, and fasten the screws -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 03:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's the cable. It went back to normal for a while after I messed with it but now it's permanently blue. Someoneinmyheadbutit&#39;snotme 04:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Then go buy a new one. -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 04:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It are attached to the monitor. Someoneinmyheadbutit&#39;snotme 18:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Does anyone maybe know of software than can correct the color balance? Someoneinmyheadbutit&#39;snotme 03:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If it's cyan (greenish blue) you've lost your red signal. No software will bring the red back if it's not getting through from the computer.  You could wiggle and twist the cord around and hope it comes back.  In the process hopefully you'll determine which end of the cord has problems.  If the computer end has problems, you could canibalize a cord from a broken monitor, though that's a lot of wire splicing.  If the monitor end's the problem, you'll need to find an identical or extremely similar monitor, take both apart, find where the cord plugs in (there's usually a plug of some kind inside where the cord connects to the innards) and switch cords.  Of course before that, it couldn't hurt to try the nearly identical monitor first, if it works, why bother?  There are other possibilities to check though.  It's possible the DAC for that color has died on your graphics card.  Borrow someone else's monitor to test this.
 * No, it's the cable. When I twisted it it used to work again a while but now it won't respond. I tried to adjust the color balance with the NVIDIA control panel but even when I increased the red nothing change, so I guess I have lost the red signal. Someoneinmyheadbutit&#39;snotme 19:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * A good way to check if a channel's gone or just weakened is to set the desktop to the primary colour that's missing (red if you see cyan, green if magenta, blue if yellow). If the channel's completely gone, the desktop will be black. Neon  Merlin  23:53, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Regular expressions
I'm looking to get the Platypus Firefox extension to match a large block of text starting with one thing and ending with another. The text is across multiple lines. Without changing the flags (since they're not accessible), what pattern will match it?

Example: Text Text START Text Text Text END Text Text

where the pattern matches everything between  and , regardless of whether it is letters, punctuation, whitespace, etc. The usual trick of including  or   does not seem to work. 81.104.175.145 03:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You may not be able to do this with a regular expression unless it treats characters you can specify as newlines (which isn't always the case).

Good places to get started in programming?
I'd really like to get into programming, but i'm not sure what I'd want to do. Part of me wants to make simple games in Py, that are story, artwork, and music driven, part of me wants to make complicated 3D network games, and another part wants to go into working on linux distros! Obviously simple things are easier to learn, but where's a good place to start learning to be able to do a wide variety of tasks? Sometimes I have ideas for web flash games, and sometimes I get images of a text editor that would better suit my needs. Obviously, these aren't things you can just learn and do over night, but knowing where to start would be nice. Keep in mind, we're only talking about linux here, I don't care about .NET or DX or anything proprietary like that. I'm guessing "learn C and start doing crap with it", but I'd like a more in depth opinion. I already know a tiny tiny bit of Python, and I'd prefer to keep learning that, since it's easier for me to read, but I'll go with whatever is best -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 04:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If you know a little bit of python, stick to it for a start. It is not very important which language you use to learn programming, but you should limit the number to one until you are a little better.


 * Now you need to find a project that is both interesting and doable for you. Your expectations on your abilities for the first few projects are probably far to high. If you try to write a multiplayer 3D shooter as a beginner, you will get absolutely nowhere. Hah, if you try to write a decent multiplayer 3D shooter as anything less than an expert on geometric algorithms you will get nowhere either.


 * For a start it is best to take some form of course. You can do a course in real life, you can buy a book and work through it or you can search for a good tutorial on the web. The most important thing are the excercises. You need to write little programs, lots of little programs and get more practice doing it.


 * When you aquired some basic skills, try to find things that you might like to program. For example you might want to divide a poem into blocks that rhyme. Or you could create a game of tic tac toe. Mabe you need a program that reformats a set of web page to use another style. Or you want to converts pictures from one format to another by a rule based on the file name. If you like network programming, write a little chat program. There is really an endless amount of ideas. If you only do the projects, that seem possible, but require you to learn one or two new aspects of programming, these are the right projects.


 * My personal favorite toy project is writing a game of tetris. That might be too difficult for you as a beginner, but I recommend it to anyone who is an experienced programmer and wants to get up to speed with a new language. I did that four times already, and I still believe my objective-c verison is the best tetris implementation ever made. ^^


 * We seem to have the perfect book for you right here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-Programmer's_Tutorial_for_Python/Contents.


 * I like that answer! Before making tetris, you may want to consider making a simple notepad whereby you allow (from console) someone to add/delete/edit/sort notes. This is easy enough in Python and would get you going :). Josh Holloway  10:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I just linked the book in the first place because it was on wikipedia, but I just skimmed through it, and it is PHANTASTIC! Four years ago I actually created a new beginners course on java from scratch, because all the existing material was starting with objects and classes and fancy things, but the wikibook just nails the sequence of topics right down perfectly.


 * How do you feel about Java? I think it's a good starting language myself, and it makes stuff like graphics etc for games easier to implement. Then after you create Phoeba Wright: Grace Attorney or something, you will probably have enough knowledge to jump to other languages much simpler. But that's just my 2 cents. I didn't actually learn Java first, but when I was taking a uni course on Java, I thought people should learn Java first. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 14:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * When teaching programming, what you really want to do is telling how to predict what exactly a computer will output if it executes the program. The only important thing for a first language is that you can understand the logical model behind it so that you can make these predictions accurately. That makes for example Prolog completely off limits for a learning language. The logical model of prolog is far too difficult to understand.


 * While the java language itself is fine in that respect, the swing toolkit is actually pretty horrible. It hides the event loop from the programmer, and incorrect understanding of how the event loop works leads to a lot of confusion about gui programming. The mechanism is not even documented and I have spent a whole day looking with a debugger at the internals of swing to understand the finer points of its painting, layout and modal event handling. A large majority of students who learned java at my university had not understood how to use the swing toolkit properly after more than 3 years.

Oh don't get me wrong, I doubt I'll be able to make even a basic shooter in many moons, if ever. Thanks for that wikibook, I'd only seen http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Python_Programming - and it doesn't seem to be quite as helpful. -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 16:16, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Learning programming and learning a new programming language are totally different.

javascript
would you please show me a way of using javascript in my html documents which I edit in notepad! If possible type me a simple html document with javascript in it.


 * Well, what do you want to do with JavaScript? Splintercellguy 13:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You can find hundreds of Javascript tutorial and examples on the web. If you want a simple example, add the following to any HTML document:
 * 
 * alert('Hello world!');
 * And you'll get a little note saying hello. --140.247.240.18 15:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * And you'll get a little note saying hello. --140.247.240.18 15:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The Extension Developer's Extension for Firefox is good for this. Root4(one) 15:14, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Does the Xbox360 elite include an HD DVD player?
I am thinking about getting a Xbox360 elite. But I do not know if it comes with and HD DVD player, or do you have to buy it separately.
 * Check our article on the X-box elite. --Cody.Pope 13:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Whats that?
For a year or so everything was fin but now firefox takes a eternity to start up and i hear the hard disc all the time. Is this some kind of governmental spyware? How can I find out what's going on. I'm using linux and with the "top" command I see firefox-bin running with a low cpu percentage. On the whole the processor is fairly idle but there's high (~97%) wa.

What can I do? 84.160.231.38 18:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You might try trashing your Firefox cache and preferences file (I'd backup the bookmarks first). I have had that fix similar problems before. --140.247.240.137 19:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Start off with the advice above (deleting your cache and prefs). If that doesn't work, try a defrag or see if a large chunk of the program is sitting on bad sectors in your hard drive.--GTPoompt 14:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think your chances of having spyware on Linux are pretty slim. According to the Ubuntu Wiki, as are your chances of your hard drive becoming fragmented, so I'd disregard GTPoompt's comment (although it probably would have been relevant for Windows). If reseting your cache and preferences doesn't work, you might want to try reinstalling Firefox (if you got it from your distro's repositories, it should be pretty easy). --saxsux 22:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Website Compatibility
Hello. What other Internet browsers other than Internet Explorer can load cheese.com ? Thanks. --Mayfare 19:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see anything like AvticeX preventing other browsers from loading it. If you're developing a website, you really should have a bunch of browsers on your own computer to test it, otherwise I don't see why you need our help -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 19:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It loads in Firefox and is, for the most part, readable. However, it is a skinny little blob with tons of white space on both sides.  The web designer needs to learn about fluid design. --Kainaw (talk) 20:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * And I'm counting 4 Google ads, and two animated flash banner ads. Google ads are click-based, and I seriously doubt that people are more likely to click if there are four of them, all visible on one screen. This is exactly what Adblock was created for. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 20:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Looks ok in Firefox (Iceweasel) and Konqueror; but fails w3c validation. As Kainaw said, fixed sizes are a bad idea. Plus I use Adblock on firefox and don't use javascript on konqueror, so the ads went bye. --h2g2bob (talk) 21:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Is fine in Opera :) Josh Holloway  23:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * All appears to work just fine, even with some broad-targeted Greasemonkey, but whoever thought that the fixed width was a good idea should be taken out and shot re-educated. 81.104.175.145 03:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

AIM Phoneline
For some reason, I cannot set up AIM Phoneline with my screen name - every time I attempt to do so, I get an error message that says - "We're sorry. We are unable to complete your registration at this time." What can I do? Is the server having issues, or is it a problem with my account?  Ali  (t)(c) 21:16, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think AOL would be a lot better at answering that than Wikipedia... --saxsux 22:27, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I have the same errors. Your not alone-soundnut