Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2012 May 1

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May 1

Task bar/Title bar in Windows

I'm running Windows 7 with Windows Media Player. I have the task bar pinned to the top of the screen instead of the Windows default bottom. I'm watching a lecture video and when the file opened, the title bar of the video went under the task bar. Therefore, I can't move the window. Is there a way to move the window without grabbing the (inaccessible) title bar? It does this fairly often, so I'd prefer not to have to move the task bar, move the window, put the task bar back, repeat next time this happens. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 04:43, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

ALT+SPACE, Move. …or some better long term solutions here: http://www.google.com/search?q=linux%20style%20alt%2Bclick%20move%20window%20%22Windows%22 ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:19, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

That got it. Thanks! Dismas|^(talk) 06:06, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Homepage showing different webpage link

Hello there, Today when I have opened my browser homepage, I noticed a white webpage along with this Vietnamese web link www.tdtt.gov.vn. I tried to reopen my yahoo homepage but failed. At first, I thought it was some kind of malware that causing this trouble. I have avast Internet security and Malwarebyte Anti malware Pro. I had my OS checked by both of these software, but no malicious objects found. How can I rectify this problem? Thank you--NAHID 15:52, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

So you cannot open any web page but that one? What about in a different browser? ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• I tried it in IE by setting homepage yahoo.com. Setting other webpage as homepage opens fine. It only happens if yahoo.com is set as homepage.--NAHID 18:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you open a tab and go to yahoo.com at all? ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• Nope.--NAHID 22:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps it has somehow written it self to your host file? That could cause precisely the symptoms you describe, your computer essentially substitutes one address for the other. The article tells you where you can find it. Vespine (talk) 22:52, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• • I've updated Firefox from version 11 to version 12. And the problem seems go away. Now the browser shows homepage just fine. I think that link may not be incorporated with the newer version of Firefox.--NAHID 17:50, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Processor? noise and a weird .pdf

Two questions for one here.

1. My laptop has a tendency to produce sometimes annoying and sometimes informative noises from somewhere in its electronics. They range from high pitched to out and out "ultrasonic". These are not coming from any speaker. What are they?

2. An example of one of these came when I read a file [1] recently. It was an "embargoed" release of a government report (though the embargo has since expired). Unlike any other .pdf file I've ever opened, this one makes 162 regularly spaced high-pitched sounds, about 1/3 second apart, when opening it. So I might as well ask... anything special about this file, perhaps pertaining to the "embargo" or some kind of spying on that basis? (Incidentally, it's a report that the TARP assets were never really repaid, and a lot of them are going to be losses - we're down about 4 times the total NIH budget, so bankers could give themselves bonuses for going bankrupt) Actually - these noises come only from the Netscape plug-in; no such sound comes when opening in the standalone .pdf reader. Wnt (talk) 18:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

1. May be coil noise (in an inductor coil or a transformer). Ceramic capacitors can whine too, due to piezoelectric effects. This kind of thing is more likely to come from the power supply than other parts of a PC, but the toroidal inductors near many CPUs can whine too. As an end user, there's not much you can do about this (some people glob hotglue on things to damp them, but I can't recommend that). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:03, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

The file should be irrelevant, except for that reading it puts a certain amount of demand on the system. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:06, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but it's not. Hundreds of other .pdfs never made a noise like this one does. I should note that this has nothing to do with display - for example, other distinctive sounds are made by the antivirus program when it's checking updates, and by the chess game when it's thinking prior to making a move. Wnt (talk) 19:24, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

The point is that even if it's only happened to you with this particular PDF, the noise isn't coming from the PDF, but from whatever demand that PDF is putting on the system. (or alternatively the PDF could have some embedded media stuff and what you're hearing is your mobo speaker trying to play it, but given your descriptions this is less likely) ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Most computers have 2 ways they are supposed to make sound:

1) The sound card is used to make normal sounds, using external speakers (sometimes built into the monitor).

2) The motherboard itself often has the ability to make beeps or other basic sounds. This is used to communicate with the user when there's a severe problem, typically during booting. Something like "3 quick beeps means...". I believe these usually have the ability to change the pitch of the beep. The BEL character can be typed to produce this beep, but I'm not sure if that can be done in a PDF file. StuRat (talk) 20:37, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

No, definitely not either of those. If I use Audacity to generate a 15000 Hz tone, my speaker seems to fade in and out randomly, like it can't handle producing the sound, but it sounds like it's somewhere very roughly in the neighborhood of this, though it seems both lower and higher pitched than that. Wnt (talk) 21:42, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

This is definitely a strange one.. If you have acrobat writer software, or could get your hands on it, you could try a few experiments, like copy and paste the visible content of the pdf into a new file and see if it still makes the noise. You can get free pdf converter software, but depending on the original it might not be easy to copy the contents accurately. I work in IT support and do this once in a while with excel and word files that have gone "funny". Vespine (talk) 02:58, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me the discussion above has gotten a little sidetracked. As per Reisio and FW, I agree the most likely explanation is simply the PDF causes high processor usage for some reason. Rather then getting in to complicated analyses, the first thing to do would be to check this theory. Open Task Manager or the equivalent on whatever OS you're running and check how processor usage is affected by the PDF. If processor usage spikes and stays to close to 100%, or perhaps at least one core is is used, this is the most likely cause. Of course if usage does not spike or stay, then it seems likely it's not so simple. It could be a power issue, power usage tends to depend greatly CPU usage but it's not a perfect correlation. It could also be a GPU usage issue, although detecting whether GPU usage is high is more difficult. Nil Einne (talk) 17:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)