Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 December 19

= December 19 =

Torrent use
Yes, this is my third question today (I'm the guy with the new imac, and I'm coming from a PC background). Sorry for being such a greedy brain picker. So I'd never used bit torrent before today. I read a few articles here on it, and then downloaded μtorrent. I then downloaded a (public domain) movie to it. Now I'm stumped. I want to be able to watch the movie (isn't that sort of the point?). I'm sure I'm missing something staring me on the face, but for the life of me I can't see anything in the μtorrent interface that allows me to do anything with the download. I opened up imovie, thinking that maybe that would allow me to watch it but I didnlt understand that either. I also might like to burn the movie to a dvd (but I don't have any blank ones right now to do so). I found the disk utility on my mac. If I had a dvd to put in my drive, would I be able to burn the download to there and then play it on my dvd player? So two questions how do I play the damn download and how would I put it on dvd. Thanks.--68.160.243.32 (talk) 00:17, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Has the entire movie finished downloading? If you just downloaded a .torrent file, you need to load that into utorrent which will then start the download of the actual movie; the .torrent file itself is just a reference file for utorrent to use. If the movie is completely downloaded, just navigate to the download folder, or right click on the movie in utorrent and select "open containing folder". The movie file will be here and you can play it with a media player like VLC, move it somewhere else, or whatever. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 00:26, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend Transmission over µTorrent. (I'd recommend Deluge, but it doesn't have a "proper" Mac OS build or dmg) ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:48, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it downloaded all right. It took and hour, showed download as 100% complete and is 790+ megabytes of files. I was able to move them into a folder on my desktop. It's made up of 47 separate files each having the names "imbt-xvid-name of movie.r1". I tried dragging them into the VLC player, and then opening then and it says "no suitable decoder module." I tried using quicktime. When I go to that in applications and double click, I don't get anything at all on my screen—only menu options at the top of the screen which show I am in that program; the only thing in there I can think to use is "open file" and when I do that and navigate to the folder, all the movie sections are greyed out. I am very frustrated right now!--68.160.243.32 (talk) 01:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * It sounds like the torrent contained the movie split into a bunch of chunks, which you'll need to merge into a single file that can be played by VLC. You'll need to figure out what program was used to split it up (perhaps there will be an accompanying TXT or NFO file in the torrent archive that explains) so you can recombine it. 87.115.159.188 (talk) 02:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * RAR is a possibility (with names like movie.r01, movie.r02, etc...) see the linked article for information on unpacking 67.162.90.113 (talk) 06:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * If Mac has a terminal emulator program, open it, and then enter

cd '/path/to/torrent/download/dir' file 'imbt-xvid-name of movie.r1'
 * The file program will display a best-guess of the file-type. CS Miller (talk) 12:29, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd be willing to bet it's RAR as one of the posts above stated. Vespine (talk) 00:48, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Generally when there are lots of files with names like .RAR, .R01, .R02, etc., they are RAR file. Find the one with "RAR" as the extension and you should be able to open it with StuffIt Expander (which should already be installed automatically). --Mr.98 (talk) 03:57, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

World of Warcraft
I've played World of Warcraft for a while, no problem. I bought The Burning Crusade expansion set today and installed it. The installation worked fine. But then when I try to run the game it says "Launcher requires write permission to the World of Warcraft Registry key to successfully locate and run the game. Please enable write access to the Registry key using an administrator account." I've looked in the folder where the game is installed and there's nothing with that name. I tried right-clicking and running as an administrator, but it didn't work. Can anyone help? — Fly by Night  ( talk )  18:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The bottom post in this forum discussion claims a solution. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. That didn't work. I managed to find the answer. It seems that the DVD's carry an old version of the game, i.e. patch 2.x or 3.x, when the game client uses 4.x. When I was playing the old WoW I was updated to patch 4.x. When I installed the newer DVD it still carried an old patch compared to what the system runs on today. So I replaced all my nice new updated files with old ones. It seems a bit stupid to sell a DVD in the shop that if you install it, it'll mess up your game! It seems that all I needed to do was update my account with the CD code. I could put the DVD in the bin. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  21:48, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * How do you suppose Blizzard is supposed to enforce the cessation of DVD sales after they are obsolete? And requiring Blizzard to have their installation programs infinitely backwards compatible is also a bad idea. Also, if you are surprised by this, dont look at the bargain bins. I bet many of the games in store bargain bins will have problems running on Windows 7 :) 212.69.25.157 (talk) 22:38, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Connecting a laptop to the Internet through UMTS
How many ways are there to connect through UMTS to the Internet with a laptop? I know that you can use some cell-phones as modem, use a UMTS modem (which looks like a pen-drive), and there are also PC- cards, where you put your UMTS card inside. However, can you simply insert the UMTS card in some kind of UMTS slot on the laptop? Quest09 (talk) 21:45, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * What do you mean when you write "UMTS card"? Do you mean a Subscriber Identity Module? -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:49, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, a SIM that allows connecting through a UMTS net. 21:53, 19 December 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quest09 (talk • contribs)


 * What that would amount to is a laptop having a built-in UMTS modem (which is essentially the same equipment as in the PC-card or USB modem, just inside the laptop's body, and with the antenna integrated into the laptop frame), with just the SIM socket exposed somewhere. There are a few laptops and netbooks that do this (it seems Fujitsu Siemens make ones that do). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:01, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * But what is the official name of this "UMTS slot-with-a-UMTS-modem"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quest09 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no standard; different manufacturers may choose to offer an optional module for a given laptop that implements UMTS (e.g. Samsung NC10). But one module from one laptop will not fit into another laptop. So there's no official name. A manufacturer might call it a "UMTS module" or something, but that's up to them. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 22:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)