Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 January 12

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January 12

"Can't extract MFC42.DLL"

My computer has two issues:

• The battery does not charge. I don't know why - I've bought two batteries for this computer, and the second one doesn't work either. I tried checking the service tag in the BIOS, but it is properly set. My understanding was that the service tag must be properly set.
• I downloaded the latest BIOS from Dell. However, it does not work: when I tried running it from the command prompt in administrator mode (Vista), it says Can't extract MFC42.DLL. It does not give any message at all when I run it not from the command prompt.

I was hoping to fix the first problem with the second. (anonymous) 00:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

And just to clarify I downloaded MFC42.dll from support.microsoft.com and put it in the same directory but it still is coming up with that message. (anonymous) 00:20, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Have you (or, are you able to) tried using a different charger? Dell laptop chargers have a chip which tells the computer that you are using a 'Genuine Dell Charger' - and if you are not, the battery will not charge. I believe you would normally see a message on startup if this was the case, though. However, if you know someone else with a Dell laptop, try using their charger before playing with the BIOS - it just might work! - Cucumber Mike (talk) 01:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I have tried two different non-Dell chargers, and neither is charging it properly. I figured out the BIOS error (after a ton of searching) is because it won't allow the BIOS to work unless the battery is charged or not plugged in (Dell's programmers are apparently paid about $2.50/hr because the program exits with "error 144" or just crashes altogether, giving no coherent explanation whatsoever). Is there any way to fool the battery into thinking it's working with a Dell charger? The charger works just fine; Dell just puts the check in order to force the consumer to buy another from them. (anonymous) 05:01, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Mind you, I don't want to pay $60 [1] for a cord when I have a perfectly functioning one. (anonymous) 05:07, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

People want to start a class action lawsuit against Dell. Dell turns quite a big profit on the batteries. There are some knock-offs that are supposed to have a chip that fools the laptop’s “Dell screws their customers” circuitry. If you have a lot of l33t skillz it is probably possible to fix this, but I wouldn't recommend it because it takes too much time. Von Restorff (talk) 15:59, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Upgrading RAM while hibernated

I recently added more RAM to my Windows 7/Xubuntu dual-boot PC. On booting, Windows reported that it could not resume the hibernated session because \HIBERFIL.SYS was invalid; I assume this is because the new memory was unaccounted for. Does an analogous problem occur with hibernated sessions in Linux? Has anyone built a tool that can update hibernated sessions after a RAM upgrade? NeonMerlin 00:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I might be wrong old chap but I would suggest if you are going to make a physical change to your system to do a full shutdown first so that Windows has a chance to detect new hardware during the bootup sequence and install any drivers etc it needs to run it when it reboots from scratch? Quintessential British Gentleman (talk) 00:21, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

My bet is that, if anyone were to build such software, you'd need to restart the computer to install it... (because it would interact with the kernel) Paul (Stansifer) 01:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

It's hopeless to alter the hibernation file to give immediate access to the new RAM, because there are undoubtedly many different internal data structures that are initialized once per boot under the assumption that the amount of RAM is fixed. It may be hopeless even to make the hibernation file bootable (using only the old amount of RAM) because of the complexities of mapping RAM chips and memory-mapped IO zones into the "physical" address space, and it would be pretty much pointless since you'd have to shut down and restart anyway to complete the upgrade. If you just want your lost hibernated state back, and you haven't otherwise booted Windows since then, it will boot if you restore the original RAM configuration. I know because I made this same mistake once. -- BenRG (talk) 16:32, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

This is pretty much why I never put my computers to hibernate. The only way around it is take the new ram out, reboot the system, shut it down fully, fit the ram, and boot it up with all the ram. Mrlittleirish 16:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Average amount of time for two-qubit entanglement.

I was wondering if anyone knows what the average amount of time is for an entanglement of two-qubits. I would have to assume that the amount of time is longer than say for seven qubits. This question is obviously about quantum information science. Thanks. This is the second time I'm asking this question by the way. Lighthead ^þ 03:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

What's with the eerie silence? Nobody knows about qubits? Lighthead ^þ 03:06, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

No, sorry, I don't know anything about qubits. I do know stuff about DJ Qbert and the game Q*bert. I googled around a bit but everything I could find was too complicated for me to understand. Von Restorff (talk) 03:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

That's funny... thanks for trying at least. Yeah; it can get pretty complicated. I thought I was unofficially being blacklisted because I started trouble here on Reference desk one time. Pheww! What a relief! Lighthead ^þ 05:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, we don't blacklist people from asking sensible questions, unless they're site-banned or something. As for qubits, I'm vaguely familiar with quantum computing but I honestly wouldn't know where to begin with that question. --NYKevin @292, i.e. 05:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It's been a while since I've studied quantum things, but I may be able to help. However, I'm not sure what you mean by average time for an entanglement; if you can help me, I can probably help you :-) Phoenixia1177 (talk) 12:49, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Like the majority here (and in the computing world) (but possibly unlike Phoenixia1177), I know next-to-nothing about quantum entanglement of qubits, and I can't find anything in Wikipedia about time of entanglement of Bell states. Can anyone else find an appropriate article? (Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states and W states involve three qubits, and there is no mention of entanglement time there either.) Dbfirs 17:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you asked in the wrong place. :-) I have heard talks about quantum computing technologies where decoherence times were mentioned, but I've forgotten them, and it's a bit hard to find information online. All I know is that it depends totally on the type of hardware. Quantum computer#Quantum decoherence says that decoherence times "typically range between nanoseconds and seconds at low temperature". -- BenRG (talk) 19:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

1) Which Reference desk should I go to? 2) I haven't seen that article section, and I also don't know a whole lot about quantum computers compared to experts, but I do know enough to be pretty certain that there's never been a documented decoherence in the second range. Nanosecond for sure but not second. Maybe nanosecond is the average for now. And therefore I've answered my own question. As to that article section, it might have to be rewritten. Not by me because I only know somewhat more than you guys. I have heard about decoherence in the microsecond range, but I had no idea that people knew so little about the field. I'm sorry if anyone felt like their time was wasted. Lighthead ^þ 04:13, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The reference in that article section has a serious problem. The link is to an abstract that doesn't even close to mention said decoherence range. I'll put the appropriate tag. Lighthead ^þ 04:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

According to Quantum Computation and Quantum Information(Nielsen/Chuang) from 2010, they give a crude estimation based upon the type of system:

Nuclear spin 10 ** −2 to 10 ** -8

Electron spin 10 ** −3

Ion trap (In+) 10 ** −1

Electron – Au 10 ** −8

Electron – GaAs 10 ** −10

Quantum dot 10 ** −6

Optical cavity 10 ** −5

Microwave cavity 10 ** 0,

With 10 ** -k being an average in seconds. Quantum Information and Quantum Computation (Bellac) says, "the decoherence time, is inversely proportional to some positive power of the size of the system, often the square of this size. Thus, we expect decoherence to be more and more important as the number of qubits increases.". This is all I have, most of my quantum books aren't about quantum computing, so I'm not to helpful. (On an aside, how hard would it have been for someone to give a quick one line refresher on what "entanglement time" meant? Sorry if that sounds bitchy:-) Phoenixia1177 (talk) 06:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

By the way, the table from Nielsen/Chuang seems at odds with what you are saying above, they do no say where they got their table, so I can't say much about how accurate it is, sorry about that, its the best I could locate. Phoenixia1177 (talk) 07:01, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Lighthead ^þ 18:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Looking for a 3d First Person Shooter/Engine/Game Making System that Allows Tinkering with Enemy AI

I recently started playing Bioshock and started thinking about the AI in the game, specifically the dynamic between npcs that can end up engaging in conflict and goal based behaviour, which leads me to wanting to experiment with more elaborate versions. However, I do not have the time, or the graphics ability, to program a shooter from scratch just to experiment with enemy ai (and doing a program that just relays results of what would happen lacks the fun of something you could actually interact with) Thus, I'm looking for some system/game that would let me design custom levels and enemies; the more flexible the better. I don't care about graphics (I'd be happy with Wolfenstein/Doom era, or even polyhedra moving about in 3d), though if it does use advanced graphics, I would need there to be a decent ammount of existing resources. Finally, I have no preference in programming language or complexity, so long as a basic framework is already in place; I would also be happy with a pc game that had the ability to build sufficiently custom levels. Side Note: My question reads a tad on the ill defined/rambling side of things, if anything is unclear, please let me know so that I can elaborate/clarify. Thank you in advance for any help:-) Phoenixia1177 (talk) 08:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

This is the op, around a $100 is the most I would be capable/willing to pay for this, I am not looking to make an actual game and don't require any type of license and would like to be able to use free existing graphics. 209.252.235.206 (talk) 09:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't quite know if it's what you want but Garry's Mod has programmable scriptable NPCs, which you can program in Lua. It's probably a bit simple for what you want but it's very cheap. http://wiki.garrysmod.com/?title=Basic_Scripted_NPC has some info plus the forums at facepunch.com 192.84.79.2 (talk) 10:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really into modding, but the source code to Quake, up to to Quake III Arena, is under the GPL, and OpenArena seems to be an entirely free game build around this. Alternatively, Half-Life and its descendant Counter-Strike are heavily modable and have huge mod communities. I assume this also enables changes to the AI, but don't know to what degree. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:05, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Possibly helpful could be Unity (game engine). fredgandt 11:54, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you all very much for your responses:-) All of these look interesting (now I have something awesome to work on this weekend!) Phoenixia1177 (talk) 10:17, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

every time i search the web my internet explorer stops working what can i do to fix this problem?

every time i search the web my internet explorer stops working what can i do to fix this problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jake.edu (talk • contribs) 18:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Run the fixit thingy. If nothing else works download malwarebytes free and scan your computer. If that does not work either then run the System File Checker. Von Restorff (talk) 10:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

What are you using to search the web? What version of Internet Explorer are you using? What add-ons (yes, even all those fancy toolbars) have you added? -- kainaw™ 19:32, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Why stay with stone tools, many people have now switched to more popular browsers. --Aspro (talk) 20:05, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Err, "popular" is probably not the right modifier there. IE is still the "most popular" browser out there by market share for desktop computers. It's gotten less popular over the years, but it's still the most popular. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps Aspro meant to speak of popularity within a specific cohort, excluding people who, for instance, refer to email as 'the email,' like my dad :) DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I didn’t have the benefit of you young folk that learnt all this high faluting new mathematics that can prove less-is-more etc., but in my day this graph would suggests that IE had less than 50% and hence the less popular. Not withstanding also, that many browser are set to report themselves as being IE so as to access IE only sites. (Graphic linked because it is huge and a bit OT) But then again, all this, is from Wikipedia and who believes anything on that website. However, I am willing to sit (not stand) and be corrected. --Aspro (talk) 00:42, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and as Drosenbach hints at, the WP cohort is 34 %.(ditto). Note: the OP asked on WP ref desk and so he is one of us (this cohort) – one must presume... And still using neolithic apps. Thats all I'm saying!--Aspro (talk) 00:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

If you are considering it IE vs. everything else, then it's less popular. But if you consider it every browser for themselves, it's IE as the most popular. If I said that apples were the most popular fruit, you wouldn't assume that I meant that they were more popular than the sum of the popularity of all other fruits put together, would you? But anyway, we're getting off topic here. I've shrunken those graphs to links — they're distracting from the actual question-answering. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Feel like I could be accused of splitting hairs here and being overly pedantic, but here goes:'“pop·u·lar/ˈpäpyələr/Adjective:Liked, admired.” The OP does not seem enthralled by IE. Most PC users are just stuck with IE. If Mr.98 had said it was the most “ubiquitous” then yes, I'd might had agreed, but the most “liked” and “ admired” ...!!! People whose native tongue is English don't seem to have command of it.- -To use an old English phrase: I rest my case, mi' Lord.--Aspro (talk) 18:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

popular is not the same as frequently used. IE users generally never made a choice to use that particular browser. Von Restorff (talk) 10:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I would phrase it differently: they never made the choice to use a different browser than IE. --Ouro (blah blah) 17:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

i dont have addons i have Internet explorer 8 on windows XP — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jake.edu (talk • contribs) 19:24, 13 January 2012 (UTC) thank you

Jake: To be frank; there is too little detail about how, when, where, whither, wherefore and whitebait, to be able to pinpoint any particular issue you may be experiencing (and thus provide a method of fixing it). My personal recommendation is to download and use (as your default browser) Google Chrome. IE is a bug ridden dinosaur which is prone to an endless procession of problems. Chrome never gives me any trouble. fredgandt 19:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)it works thank you i am now useing Google chrome its the best no bugs

I think fredgandt gives good heart felt advice here. Try Google Chrome. What have you got to loose, other than a lot of frustration.--Aspro (talk) 22:36, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The difference of TouchWiz and Android?

Hello, I'd like to know what TouchWiz does, and how would Android acts if it'll be deleted from a Galaxy phone. Does it control over the "relation" of the touchscreen and the kernel? Exx8 (talk) 23:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Reading the TouchWiz it sounds like TouchWiz is primarily a launcher (that is, it's the thing that runs when the phone starts, and it's from TouchWiz that you start other apps). If TouchWiz is anything like HTC Sense (which is what HTC brand Android phones use for that task) it's also responsible for desktop widgets, notifications, and locking the screen. It's possible to install other apps that function as a launcher too (some are listed here). I don't know if you can remove TouchWiz altogether, but you can try a different launcher. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Note that my "launcher" link above is for the equivalent thing for Windows; I don't think we have a summary article for Android or iOS launchers. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Googling suggests that TouchWiz can be disabled (if not actually removed) on some but not all phones. If you disable it you get the standard Android launcher (by Google), which is not much different. -- BenRG (talk) 02:44, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Embedding a video into PPT 2003

I would like to embed a 1-minute segment of Spaceballs into a PPT and I use the 2003 version (because I like it the best). I have the film in avi format, but after finding instructions online about how to embed it, it comes up with audio but no video. The 1-minute segment is a very comedic one, and is featured as 3 different youtube videos, and I watched a youtube video showing me how to embed such a youtube video into PPT, but all 3, when clicked on to begin playing in PPT format, say 'embedding disabled by request -- please visit youtube.' So I think I'm back to my film in avi format -- does anyone know how I can embed it with audio and video, and also perhaps if I'm able to do just the 1-minute segment, rather than having to find the place and stopping it after a minute. Thanx! DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I can help you with the one-minute bit - use a simple editing tool like VirtualDub, cut out the portion you'd like to embed, save it to a separate file. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:28, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885915 Von Restorff (talk) 09:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)