Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 July 4

Computing desk
< July 3	<< Jun | July | Aug >>	July 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 4

Webpage question

I am trying to design a webpage for a company and I need, if you can send me, the code for finding the most visited pages(links) in my webpage. Thank you! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.31.127.100 (talk • contribs) 08:00, 4 July 2007.

AWStats is one of the tools used for analyzing server logs. It can give you A LOT of data about visitors to your website and "most visited pages" are just one of its options. If you are using Shared web hosting service ask your hosting technical support about this. — Shinhan < talk > 08:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Google Analytics is also an option. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 10:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Or - just look at your log files. As you stated, you are currently designing the page. So, I would expect that you have no visits yet. -- Kainaw^(what?) 13:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Drive-detection problems

Last night I had problems with the detection of drives during post that I can not attribute to one specific part of the system. This morning everything started without a glitch, but now I'm afraid to shut down my computer (tonight) if I don't know what the cause was because I couldn't start an operating system last night, so any tips in the next 10 hours would be very welcome. I installed a new motherboard last week, so I suspect the problem to lie there.
The first problem was that post didn't 'see' the hard disk on which my two current operating systems (Suse 10.2 and WinXP Pro) reside. First I tried another IDE cable, but that didn't help. Then I disconnected the two sata drives, in case the 6 drives were drawing too much power, but that didn't help either. Then I tried swapping to the other IDE channel, but still no luck. So the problem is to do neither with the cable nor with the channel.
When I disconnected the other drive on the same same channel the 'main' drive (still master) was recognised, but when I tried to boot the system, what started was the grub of a previous installation (don't remember on which drive). Luckily, this selection contained a reference to a previous Suse installation on the same partition as the current one, so I tried that, but that didn't work either. I doubt if this last problem is related to the first, first because it seems more os- or boot-related, while the former is to do with the hardware or bios and also because I've had a similar problem over a year ago, possibly with the same Suse-installation (or was it grub-related, I now wonder).

channel 0 master	dvd-drive	dvd	160	160	250
channel 0 slave	120	120	250	-	-
channel 1 master	160	160	dvd	dvd	dvd
channel 1 slave	250	-	120	120	120
-     means no drive attached there 160     means that drive was not detected

The table to the right shows an overview of the various combinations I tried. I named the hd's after their capacity in GB.
Some additional notes:
When only one of the two drives (160 or 250) is connected to the cable, post is very slow, taking about a minute, while normally it takes only about 10 seconds.
I changed the jumpers where needed, so that's not it.
The detection problems were fairly consistent, but not entirely. At one point all 4 drives were detected, but behind the 250 drive appeared some 'garbled' info, that is, I couldn't make heads or tails of it and then it was gone. I only remember seeing several zeroes.
Oh, there was one glitch during boot this morning - floppy disk fail. That was new, but at least it didn't affect the rest of the boot.
Any thoughts? DirkvdM 08:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This may seem really far out there, but while you've got the machine open, inspect it for leaking capacitors. They were very common in the last couple of years, and can cause all kinds of strange problems. --Mdwyer 09:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

And also can you just set all your IDE drives into Cable Select mode to eliminate the possibility of assigning 2 Master or 2 Slave drives on one channel?--antilived^{T | C | G} 10:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Like I said, I made sure I had the jumpers placed correctly. Still, if I get the same problem again I might try that, maybe that will circumvent the problem, but it's no solution.

About the leaking capacitors, I didn't see any, although I only looked at one side (I'm not going to unhook everything to inspect the back side of the mb). DirkvdM 12:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I used to have the same incompatibility between my old CD-RW and my new DVD-ROM which I thought was on CS already and was absolutely baffled is well. My CD-RW would have some random characters behind its name during POST and not detected anywhere else is well. Then as the last resort I changed both to CS mode and voilà, it's very likely it's a basic error like these when everything else doesn't work. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Update: I 'accidentally' restarted the system and all drives were detected again and the system booted, albeit through the old grub, as I described above. Why doesn't the new grub start? I believe I saw during installation that it was installed on a different drive, which is weird. Also, I don't see how these problems could be related, but if they pop up at the same time that would be too big a coincidence, wouldn't it? DirkvdM 12:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

How about you update your BIOS / firmware, make sure you have the latest drivers for everything, etc. Rfwoolf 15:05, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

The BIOS firmware is the latest version, I believe; version 3.1 from late feb 2007 and the mb is not a very recent model, so any serious problems should have been resolved in that version. Anyway, the live update works only via msWindows, and that won't start right now (working on that, though). DirkvdM 18:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Probably isn't related to your problems, but enable SMART on the BIOS (for some unknown reason, this is never enabled by default on the BIOS, even though it can be really helpful) and reboot. If you get a SMART warning message from your BIOS, it might point to a cause (for instance, one of the disks might be having problems spinning up). If you don't get a warning message, you could disable it again, but I would leave it enabled (and install a monitoring daemon on all the operating systems you use). --cesarb 20:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I think I've found the solution. Like I said, I had checked all the connections and cables, but I missed one. Power. The two drives that had problems alternatingly were both on the same cable. So I used another and the problem (which had resurfaced) was gone. What gave it away was that the drives were cold and I know that a drive with the IDE cable disconnected but the power cable still connected still gets hot. This one didn't. So I hope I've solved it now. 80.126.178.133 17:19, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Instant messenger with internet forum structure

This lacked a separate header, so I gave it one. DirkvdM 14:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

What is the name of the instant messanger which uses some of the structure of internet forums?

What do you mean by "internet forum structure"? There are many different internet forums. They have many different structures. So, you appear to be referring to one in particular, but forgot to mention which one it is. -- Kainaw^(what?) 11:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Influence of domain name on Google rankings

Does anybody know:

Does simply having a searchterm in my domain name automatically increase my google ranking?
Example: if my domain name is www.widgets2go.com and people search for "widgets" does my site automatically get a high ranking? Rfwoolf 13:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

See...http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/ I haven't read much of it (just quick browse through) but I suspect that whilst not automatically meaning a 'high' ranking it will probably increase certain aspects. My understanding is that a very large emphasis of google's ranking is based on being linked-to by many other sites and that if those sites are linked to by many others then that adds weighting (in essence meaning that the bigger the site that links to you the more google take that to mean you are what users are looking for). ny156uk 17:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

xbox 360 dvd capacity

see also Talk:Xbox 360 # 7GB or 8.5GB DVD Capacity

The xbox360 article currently states that the capacity for games of the xbox360 dvd drive is only 7GB despite it being a dual layer (12x) dvd-rom drive - which should mean 8.5 GB.

Can this info be in error, as the 1.5gb difference seems difficult to explain. Or is there an explanation anyone could give ?(preferably no guesses)

There seems to be a website that claims 7gb but without explanation - can someone set me (us) strait on this thanks.213.249.232.111 21:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

See GD-ROM, it's entirely possible that MS uses a proprietary format similar to GDROM's philosophy. Actually, knowing MS, I'd be surprised if they *weren't* --_ʇuǝɯɯoɔɐqǝɟ 21:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

the drive as far as I know is a 'standard dvd drive though'? - are you suggesting a non-copyable format to prevent piracy - I could understand that ? Do xbox 360 games not come on DVD logoed discs???213.249.232.111 21:41, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

A dual-layer DVD's capacity is 8.5GB, which is 7.9GiB so it COULD be a truncated version of this. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a certain portion around the hub is reserved for the Xbox logo watermark on the DVD surface? --72.202.150.92 05:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Inputting sound through a SB Audigy 2 ZS sound card

I want to play music from my sat receiver or tape player through my computer. I have plugged the L/R output leads into the inputs for my Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card. However, I can hear exactly zilch! I have set every volume control I can find to max and tried every imaginable setting for my audio card through control panel-sounds and audio devices to no avail. Any thoughts would be most welcome, please. TerriersFan 23:37, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you have an on-board sound card that might be the input device? The volume control to use is line-in, plus the master. Can you hear anything else from the sound card - eg playing a wave file on the computer? When you plug in the cord make sure you use the correct input (line-in) as there are a number of other input ports that will do nothing as they are digital. Other things that will stop it are the lack of a driver, but that will probably cut the sound all together. GB 01:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for these thoughts. I have the Audigy accessed from the front panel of the computer and there are a series of sound sockets at the rear of the machine, which also include input sockets, and where I plug the leads to my external speakers. I can play all the usual files, including wave format, just fine but I just don't seem to be able to get any sound from the various line-in ports. TerriersFan 22:28, 5 July 2007 (UTC)