Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 December 29

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December 29

downloading a video clip from a computer to a FLIP camera

Is it possible to download a video clip from my computer to my FLIP camera? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cgreenwood5 (talk • contribs) 04:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a Flip, but theoretically yes. It would have to be in the right format, which is apparently MP4. "Video Format: H.264 video compression, AAC audio compression, saves as MP4 file" for the Flip ULTRA HD. You might need conversion software if your original video is in MPEG, AVI, WMV or other formats. What does your user manual say? That's always a good place to start. Support site Flip Support --220.101.28.25 (talk) 08:33, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Actual amount of electricity utilized in sleep mode

I just wanted to ask how much electricity is actually utilized when the computer is in sleep mode or when it is switched off or hibernating. Can this portion of electricity be routed through a renewable source of energy. If yes, then what is the technological progress of the same in INDIAProject1985 (talk) 07:23, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of how much electricity it requires, it is possible to generate it with renewable energy. Just because it is possible does not mean it is cost effective. Nothing is keeping you from getting solar panels, wind-powered generators, or even a small hydroelectric dam if you live near a river. It doesn't matter if you are in India or not. If you want a more useful answer, you must refine your question to what you are willing to do. Are you willing to replace your roof with solar panels? Are you willing to put a huge windmill in your backyard? Are you willing to put a nuclear reactor in your basement (yes - many people consider nuclear energy a "renewable" resource)? -- kainaw™ 08:29, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

There are devices that will tell you exactly how much energy a load is using on the electrical outlet. I've found laptops are about 30-80 watts (that could change a lot). Don't know what sleep mode is, but trust it's a lot lower. Shadowjams (talk) 09:53, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't have my meter here to measure at the moment, so this note is going to be very general and you may already know this, but I'll note that a hibernating computer consumes exactly as much electricity as the computer does when it is off, since hibernation just means the computer's state has been saved to disk and then the computer switched itself off. I believe that most computers these days do consume a trickle of electricity while they are ostensibly off, whether it's to monitor a soft power switch or light up an orange LED on the case. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

After writing that, I troubled to google the matter, and this Microsoft article, though I think it contains many errors, claims that a hibernating monitor consumes 5 watts and a hibernating computer consumes 2.3 watts, whereas a computer in 'sleep' mode consumes 3.1 watts. (Why the precision? The amount surely varies a ton between computer types.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

IT question

please tell me latest techlogy that has come out in 2009 in the field of IT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.80.132 (talk) 14:04, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

See this. -- kainaw™ 15:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

How does this happen?

As of right now http://www.wheels24.co.za does not point to the Wheels24 site but instead diverts to a search portal http:// searchportal.information.com/?a_id=86034&domainname=www.wheels24.co.za My question is, how does this situation come about in general? Wheels24 is a large, popular site and is part of the News24 group. Are they simply down for some reason (all the other "24" group sites seem to be up, including www.news24.co.za). Or have they somehow been hijacked? Or have they been careless enough to let their domain registration expire (this sounds unbelievable but has it happened to large corporates before?)? Regards. Zunaid 15:08, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It points to the right site for me, at the moment. There are a couple of possibilities, though. Do you end up at the searchportal.information.com site whenever you type in a dead domain (e.g. [1])? If so, then that just means Wheels24 was temporality down and your browser or ISP uses that site whenever you put in a bad domain. If not, then it just might have to with their DNS information being either incorrect or tampered with or something along those lines. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:32, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It is still pointing to searchportal.com for me as of now. Your fake link leads me to the Firefox "Server not found" standard warning. So 2 new question: why does that specific link redirect to searchportal but not your fake link? And how come the site was up for you but not for me? I also neglected to check earlier but I have done so now: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.wheels24.co.za reports that the site is indeed down. Is it on their side that the page is being redirected to searchportal.com? (Good luck to them getting tech support during Christmas week!) Zunaid 18:30, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I just clicked your link and did end up at the wheels24 website. I wonder if your ISP's DNS servers are having trouble with it, and are redirecting you to the search portal of their choice as a result of the trouble. Is it possible to try their backup DNS server? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

(EC) It points to the right site for me too. http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.wheels24.co.za tells me the site is up. Could you tell us, if the problem still exists for you, some details on your ISP and network settings? and your computer? Do you have anti-spyware software? Is it up to date? Could it be a "toolbar" in firefox that just is a hidden addon? I think it could be 1. your computer 2. (less likely) the network system in your building or 3. (least likely) the ISP. Kushal (talk) 18:38, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

You obviously have a virus that is redirecting you to that page for ad money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.127 (talk) 19:14, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Possibly...to answer Kushal...I'm using a MTN 3G USB modem (I'll check at work tomorrow on the corporate LAN if it gives the same issue). I don't have any new add-ons or toolbars installed since last week when everything was working. Question is, how can I fix it if it is my computer that's the problem? Delete the hosts file? When it comes to PC's, networking is really my kryptonite so please explain slowly :P I'm on WinXP, busy running anti-virus and anti-spyware scans right now... Zunaid 21:19, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like the work of malware to me, probably replacing your ISP's DNS settings with the malware's DNS to deliberately send some sites via their paymasters' site in the hope that you will click on something else and earn them a fraction of a cent. Unfortunately, in my recent experience, this type of malware is making increasing use of rootkits, sometimes making it very hard to remove. Astronaut (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've got the same issue going through our corporate LAN this morning. Any advice as to how to fix it? Zunaid 06:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

If it's XP, try downloading Hijackthis to take a look at your registry settings. [2] (It's a Trend Micro free product now, so pretty safe BUT be careful when you click the "Fix this" button, best to back up your registry first) Look for entries that mention DNS, particularly entries after the IP address(es) of your correct DNS servers. This is a favourite way to take over (as Astronaut says too), just change the preferred DNS server in the registry. Also, you can find the man page for the "nslookup" command-line utility - look up the host name using your default DNS server, then change over to use (say) register.com's DNS server and see if the host still resolves to the same IP address. Franamax (talk) 07:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

For instance, when I run my HijackThis v. 1.98.2, my entry O17 is "HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip...<weird crap>: NameServer = <redacted, but they are my legitimate nameserver addresses>". If you see further NameServer= entries in the listing after the ones you know are right, you have been hijacked. Investigate the IP addresses using whois etc. just to be sure, then delete the bogus entries. (Back up your registry first if you're not sure on this, maybe do one of those "system copy" things too, an emergency recovery CD never hurts) Franamax (talk) 07:41, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys. After running HiJackThis I found a suspicious R1 entry for 196.9.207.23 amongst the list of other corporate LAN-looking stuff. Specifically this entry was in Firefox's Network --> Connection Settings --> "No proxy for:" field. It was absent from Internet Explorer's similar field but I assume it somehow hooked into IE in a different way because I had the same problem in IE. I deleted the entire entry via HiJackThis and re-input the proxy exceptions for the corporate LAN, which has now fixed the problem in both IE and Firefox. I've also run virus and spyware scans which have found nothing suspicious...can something still be lurking on my PC waiting to pounce at the next restart? One last question...if anyone would like to browse to the given IP address, what is at that site? Zunaid 14:42, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

It belongs to AfriNIC, which apparently has control over all IP addresses beginning with 41, 196, and 197. Here's WHOIS. Geolocation tells me that the address is served by MTN and located in Sandton, South Africa - a "wealthy suburb of Johannesburg". Do any of those names or locations sound familiar - for example, the place where the site is based? The IP address in question does not host a website and does not respond to an HTTP request. Xenon54 / talk / 15:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Oddly, the IP address also doesn't respond to a connection on port 53, which one would expect to happen if it was a DNS redirector. Franamax (talk) 20:04, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Yep yep, all very plausible. If you know the geography Sandton is close to Johannesburg which is the commercial capital of the country where the headquarters of all the major companies are. Not a surprise at all that the site is based there. So how come this entry was causing the problem though? Zunaid 17:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Installing XP Pro x64 on a new partition

I want to be able to dual boot Win7 and XP (both x64). I already have Win7 installed on my C drive. I added a new 10 GB partition with the disk management tool in Win7 (D drive), which is where I will install XP. When I boot from the XP disk, I hit a 0x7B BSOD after the setup files load. I looked it up and found this page: 324103. It seems like I'm running into the problem listed under #Device Driver Issues, where I need to install a mass-storage device driver with F6. When I do that, setup tells me that there are no drivers that were loaded automatically or something. According to 314859, I guess that means I need the driver on a floppy. If I am wrong so far let me know.

At this point I'm not exactly sure what I need to do. First of all, I don't have a floppy drive, as it is my laptop. Second of all, I don't really understand where to get the drivers, and what the deal is with the boot disks that are mentioned in that second article. Also, I have no idea how to use the link given in 314062 for the hardware compatibility list. I end up here, then here, which is absolutely no help to me, with what I know. So I just need some advice on where to go from here. I have an Intel Core2 Duo T6500 64bit processor. Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 21:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I would go into BIOS and change the HDD access mode from AHCI to IDE. After installation, you can then install the SATA drivers and re-enable AHCI. I'm speaking from experience, by the way.--Drknkn (talk) 23:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I changed it to IDE, and the XP installation was successful. However, I was expecting some screen like this to show up when I boot up, but it just automatically boots up XP. The partition with Win7 is untouched. Did I miss something? I don't see in the boot options in the bios how to change this. Also, could you explain SATA drivers? I'm completely unfamiliar with the term. Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 15:47, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

That screen only appears if you install Windows XP first and then Windows 7. Windows XP wrote a new master boot record to your hard drive. If Windows 7 were installed second, then it would install its own boot loader and the master boot record would load it first instead of the XP boot loader.

Did you get your Windows 7 DVD from Microsoft? If so, then you can boot from it and run a tool to repair it. It cannot be a DVD from a computer manufacturer. It must be from Microsoft. If you do not have a DVD from MS, then you can install EasyBCD and repair the boot loader.

Windows XP came out before SATA hard drives were on the market. It was designed to work with IDE drives. All new computers come with SATA hard drives. Windows 7 might work with the access mode set to IDE, by the way. Try it just like that and you might not have to install any SATA drivers.

As for the phrase SATA drivers, all parts in your computer need a driver (a piece of software) to receive commands from Windows. This includes your disk drives.--Drknkn (talk) 16:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Alright, thanks, I'm back on Win7. The repair worked, but it crashed until I switched it back to AHCI. Now, what can I do to force a boot screen, now that Win7 is booting automatically? The repair program didn't recognize XP on D:\, only Win7 on C:\. —Akrabbim^talk 17:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Try changing the system configuration (type msconfig in run). The "boot" tab should list available operating systems. If it isn't showing up, then something is wrong. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 17:58, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it isn't there either. Is there a way that I can get it to detect it, or will I have to reinstall XP? If I have to reinstall, how can I get the XP setup to not write a whole new master boot record? —Akrabbim^talk 18:10, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

No. You're making progress. Now you just install EasyBCD inside Windows 7 to add XP to the Windows 7's boot list. There's also a command called bcdedit you can use from the command prompt, but EasyBCD is much easier to use.--Drknkn (talk) 18:18, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic, it's working great now. I haven't found the hard drive drivers yet, but I'll use the Seagate support for that. Thanks for the help. Of course, I now know that the program that I had in mind that I needed XP for is completely x64 incompatible, not just Vista/7 incompatible, so I'll have to reinstall with a XP x86. Figures. (:P + XD = XP) —Akrabbim^talk 19:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)