Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 February 23

= February 23 =

iMac HD upgrades
According to OWC.com, they have internal hard drive upgrades for the iMac. I know the iMac isn't exactly the most upgradeable Mac, but are they talking about the new Aluminum iMac? Thats what I am using right now, and i was just wondering. --Randoman412 (talk) 01:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Have you considered the option of an external hard disk drive? Kushal 14:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I know about external drives, but the way OWC had it worded, it sounded as if you can upgrade your iMac HDD. That's what i wanted to know. --Randoman412 (talk) 19:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It's possible, but it's rather involved. Check out this illustrated guide  --70.167.58.6 (talk) 23:53, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Malfunctioning recycle bin
I'm on a Dell Latitude D620 with Windows XP, just in case this helps. Anyway, I have an item in my recycle bin that isn't being deleted, isn't able to be restored, and it's not allowing other files to be deleted. What can I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.16.89.112 (talk) 04:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

If you are an administrator on your system, try going to C:/recycled in the run command (Start > Run). Do you see the files there? Can you work with these files? Kushal 14:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Problem in Hibernating my PC
I use Windows XP Pro with 2GB RAM and 80GB HDD.My motherboard is INTEL 945. I enabled the hibernation option in power properties. After that, from C drive(my OS drive) windows took 2GB for some file hiber.sys I guess. Already there is a 2.5GB file called pagefile.sys.Apart from that I maintained 1.2GB free space in C drive.After restarting, next time after completing my work I tried to hibernate, it first started to initialize hibernating by displaying the screen in it's blue background colour that the "Windows is hibernating"...but within a couple of seconds screen goes black and desktop gets reloaded with a warning\error msg at the hiding icons taskbar position stating "Insufficient system resources exit to complete the API"..The lan gets reconnected but all my programs remain the same...It doesn't affect memory. I have eveything sufficient!, this error only appears when I hibernate. But not 100% times. Some times I've had hibernation performed without any such problems. What could be the cause of it...Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.63.36 (talk) 04:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Hibernating depends on writing the entire contents of the RAM onto a storage media, your hard disk. The operating system needs to make sure that your computer has enough hard disk space so that it does not fail on you when you decide to hibernate.

I had a Windows XP Pro SP2 desktop and hibernation did not always work perfectly for me either. However, even when my system had only 128 MB RAM, I never got the "Insufficient system resources exit to complete the API" error. Kushal 14:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Do you have service pack 2 (SP2) installed? According to Microsoft support, as linked at, this seems to be a fixed bug.

I believe you can go to the Microsoft support website and install the update in the page, if you do not already have Service Pack 2. If you already have Service pack, please let us know. We would love to help you further. Kushal 14:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks "Kushal",I couldn't make it earlier.I have SP2 installed already....While googling with the error message I could see many have got such problems but no proper solutions have been delivered other than FORMATTING OS DRIVE. I don't understand why fellas suggest to format to clear a solution. This is not a solution after all.But for most of the guys who've got this error had the trouble of multiple or continous restart of windows ever...but I haven't come across such problems yet.

Hi AllThis is Nitin(ask.nitin@yahoo.com), Please try the patch by microsoft KB909095, Download it, Install it and restart the computer. Iam sure it will resolve the issue.Will wait for your response.:-( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.49.139 (talk) 09:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Boot ISO from HDD
Instead of burning to a CD, is there a way to boot from an ISO image (linux live CD for example) stored on a hard disk? What kind of boot loader could do this? xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there are ways to "burn" CDs into the hard disk and access them using the software. I am not sure if you can boot from the image, though. Kushal 14:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've been able to copy the contents of a image to HDD, but I'm looking for some sort of CD drive emulator (maybe to run in DOS?) that boots and runs any ISO image you've got on your drive. I've have seen this done with floppy images. xxx User:Hyper Girl 14:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * VMware Workstation, but it costs money. Microsoft's Virtual PC sucks, but it's free of cost. D\=&lt; (talk) 15:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok ok, my fault, I should have been more clear. I'm not looking to view files in an ISO image from inside the operating system, I'm looking to "boot" them. For example, I have a blank hard drive and put one ISO file (Slax Linux live CD or Windows 95 install disk, etc) on it. I turn on the computer, and that ISO image is mounted from the HDD and run as an actual CD-ROM would be have been, enabling it to boot up and run whatever is on the virtual disk. xxx User:Hyper Girl 15:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * No.. you'd have to extract the files from the ISO with WinRAR or something, then put them on the hard drive and write a boot loader to the hard drive to load up the files. You have to mess with jumpers or BIOS settings if you're using a real ATA/SCSI hard drive; USB drives/flash sticks are easier but different. The boot process from a mass storage device is different than from a bootable CD, so you can't just copy the files over.. certain files have to be written to the boot sector, which requires a special tool- it can't be done from within Windows. You can use dd (Unix) to write to the boot sector if you have linux (or cygwin?), but in any case it's not just a simple procedure, it's different for what you're specifically trying to do. isolinux, which many linux livecds are based off of, IIRC has readmes for putting it on a flash drive.. but that would be completely different from putting a DOS floppy on a usb mass storage device, in which case you might be looking for memdisk. D\=&lt; (talk) 16:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * oooh, I like the memdisk link. But I'm still not sure I'm explaining myself properly. I know you can extract all the files from an ISO and copy them to a HDD or flash drive, and that they can be booted if you write something to the MBR. But is it possible to just load the ISO as a CD-ROM, keeping it as an ISO file on your drive? Can the BIOS or some sort of boot loader dect an ISO file is on a drive and give you the option to use it as a CD? The data calls would be emulated by perhaps a DOS or linux command line file. Ok, maybe I'm asking for the impossible. Thanks anyway everyone for helping my in my insane computer experiments! xxx User:Hyper Girl 16:37, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The closest thing I've ever heard to that is the "bootfrom" cheatcode at the Knoppix boot prompt. AFAIK it only works with booting the knoppix kernel, and you can only boot from bootable iso files. See this newsgroup posting D\=&lt; (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox search suggestions?
When I type into the search box in Firefox, it builds a little drop-down menu of search suggestions. Anybody know where those come from (I'm guessing google), and via what protocol? —Steve Summit (talk) 18:41, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It's called Google Suggest. I'm assuming, since it works behind my proxy, that the protocol is HTTP. 78.86.140.185 (talk) 18:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Aha. A bit of tcpdump action reveals that it involves a URL like.


 * Anybody know how to turn it off? (Firefox 2.0.0.11, if it matters.)  I'm asking more out of curiosity than because the feature bothers me, but I don't really use it, and I'm surprised not to see any reference to it in the regular Preferences dialogs. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Right click on the text (where you type in your search query) and uncheck "Show suggestions" Dlong (talk) 20:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Aha again! Thanks.  (Us old Mac users always forget about right-click...) —Steve Summit (talk) 21:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Weatherbox
Hi - is there any software that will help me draw a weatherbox or temperature chart please? --79.68.228.72 (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)--Seahamlass 18:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Game Name
I remember playing this game when i took computer classes a while ago. It involved motorcycles/cars drawing colored walls behind them trying to make them collide with another motorcycles/cars. What was it called?--Randoman412 (talk) 19:29, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Tron (the light-cycles subgame) or one of its clones. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * (ec) Sounds like Light Cycles, as introduced/popularized by Tron. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If the game was in 3d then try GLTron or Armagetron Advanced. APL (talk) 13:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Apple remote in Powerpoint presentation in MacBook
Hi, I have Office 2004 for Mac on my Macbook. Could anyone help me on how to use the Apple Remote to advance between slides? Is it even possible? Kushal 19:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * First hit via google using the words "apple remote powerpoint": MacWorld article. &mdash;Noah 22:07, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The MacWorld article suggests purchasing a utility; you don't need to do that, there are free ones out there. I have used iRed Lite to great effect—basically you run iRed Lite and tell it you are using Powerpoint (it's one of its options). You can also customize extensively if you are interested (I made it so that pushing one of the buttons made everything go black, for example). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 00:15, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Three-part question: Building a PC, Programming, and Hardware website
1. What is the best book on how to build a PC? I have a good knowledge of PC parts and stuff but I've never taken one apart or built one.

2. What language are common applications programmed in? And if Firefox is open-source, does that mean if you know whatever language it's written in, you can change any part of it, or can you only make add-ons?

3. What's a good website for looking at and buying computer parts?

4. Why is there no airline called Cartesian Planes? --Charmpiano (talk) 22:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure you need one. Are you asking about how to choose components or how to physically assemble it? The latter is much more straightforward than one might think, and there is also plenty of information online if there is any specific step you are having trouble with. For the former, this provides a good overview.
 * C or C++ is the standard among "hard-core" programmers. There are of course many other popular languages, depending of the requirements. Yes, if a program is open-source then you can download its source code, make whatever changes you want, recompile it and use it.
 * Newegg is fairly popular if you live in the US.
 * Because the Earth is round.
 * -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 23:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about a good book for that, but if you're already familiar with the components, just look inside another PC and you'll get a good idea of how it goes together.
 * C++ is good, as mentioned above, but don't forget Java and C#.
 * Don't forget www.tigerdirect.com
 * That just wouldn't be any fun. Useight (talk) 00:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Never, ever buy from tiger direct. Their customer service borders on actionable fraud. Even if you've never had a problem-- Newegg is legendary for how it cares for its customers, please support newegg and bury tigerdirect. D\=&lt; (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I've never had a problem with TigerDirect. I've even returned a $330 video card no questions asked. Useight (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * If everyone was paranoid and obsessively checked with consumer watchdog groups before exercising spending power, the world would be a far better place. Read their reviews, or just search google for "tigerdirect returns" and see what percent of the results are positive. Anyway heres the resellerratings link, have fun. http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1983-p1-s2-d1.html#reviews D\=&lt; (talk) 01:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

4. Imagine that you are off to Hawaii for summer (after the finals in May). How would you feel to have a "pop quiz" in College Geometry all over again on the flight? How would you like your flight attendants if they started behaving like your teaching assistants? lol Kushal 04:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)