Computer problems, and stuff.

I had a scare with my desktop tonight. While I was in the middle of writing a blog post and running a huge upload, the screen faded to black and the monitor announced that as it didn't have any signal, it would be going to sleep.

I re-seated the DVI cable and tried plugging in the VGA cable, but the only thing that worked was to reboot the computer, aborting the upload and maybe losing some writing progress.

Any idea what that was?

I would leap to the conclusion that the cables may be screwed. Check them in another monitor if possible and see if they work or not. If it is that simple, and the cables are screwed, then just buy new cables. If it isn't, then it could be a really expensive fix. Especially if you aren't screwdriver and socket wrench compatible.

My motherboard is knackered. So much for the snazzy USB 3.0 ports onboard at the back. None of which work. My USB 2.0 ones work perfectly fine. My other problem is my i5 2500K, which I bought under the understanding that I could overclock it and also use the onboard graphics facility. Not with this bastard. It's an Asus P 8 Z 68 Deluxe/Gen 3 if anyone is familiar with the brand.

Why would it be okay after a reboot if the problem was the cables?

Loose connections in the junction between the cable and their plugs. Monitor cables are funny. Even nudging them slightly, such as when happens when turning on or rebooting a computer can stop them working if there is any kind of fault in them.

My HDMI cable was a case in point earlier on. My computer had booted up, but nothing was displayed on the screen. I gave it a nudge and the display sprang to life.

You should have bought one of those 100 dollar Hdmi cables. Worth every last cent!

Anyone built a pc with scsi hard disks? I have a card and a fair few disks I want to install, but I don't want to use them in RAID as none of them are above 70 gigs in space. I just want to use them as fast storage for my Steam games until I can get a working motherboard that plays nice with my SATA disks.

Been having a problem, and i'd really appreciate a reply. Basically, after downloading an archive I tried opening the file inside. However, the file is something with the extention .hds and I can't seem to find a way to open it. Anyone know what it is?

Apparently it's a Microsoft file related to streaming? What was the archive for?

It's an archive for .mdx files which are music tracks for the x-68000. It's very rare and difficult to find, so this is probably the only archive of that type I can get.

This problem with MS Word is driving me nuts. Tables apparently have some limit on how "tall" they can be, going above which "breaks" the table like so◊. Anyone know what the cause is, and whether or not there's a solution to it?

I don't really know as I don't use Word that much, but you could try this page:

http://word.tips.net/C0035_Formatting_Tables.html

Tried the tips for stopping tables from breaking across two pages. Didn't work.

Photoshop CS 6 has developed a problem for me where sometimes when I launch it, it won't respond to any mouse dragging. That means no marquee selections and nothing to do with drawing, so it's pretty much worthless in this state. I think the last time it happened I restarted PS and it worked again, but this time I had to reboot my computer to get it to work. I've seen threads that say you need to disable Synergy, but I don't have that app.

Try paint.net. It's completely free!

That is a riddle. Is the computer a desktop, laptop, tablet, or convertible?

I'm still having problems with Chrome. Occasionally it will stop loading webpages completely, the New Tab page doesn't display anything, and typing in the URL doesn't even cause the page to even attempt to load. Closing and restarting Chrome seems to fix this but this has only been happening since last night and it's making me worried.

That's been happening to me a lot too. I believe it might be a universal issue.

Ok I spilled a little bit of 7up on my trackpad, and now it's behaving erratically. I'm not sure if any got in, because it wasn't very much, but I'm worried.

Liquids cause electronics to malfunction by creating short circuits. Usually, the currents are insufficient to melt anything. Unless the dry residue conducts electricity, which is unlikely, these things work again after drying.

I cleaned off my trackpad, shut the laptop down, and used a computer cleaner spray thingy. On restarting my trackpad seems to be working again but I'm afraid that I haven't done a thorough job cleaning it: all the online help thingies say to open up the computer and check for damage inside but I don't feel confident doing that. The spill was localized and quite small (some just sloshed out of my glass as I was putting it down) and very little, if any, got onto the keyboard, or any other part of the laptop.

More likely than damage, food residue can collect in equipment and cause literal sticky keys. This, more than anything will require the device to be taken apart to fix.

The keys all work perfetly, the only issue is the trackpad, which has been working fine since the cleaning and restart, but I'm not totally convinced that it's working perfectly. I'll be sure to note if it starts behaving oddly again (from my phone, of course)