Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 January 10

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January 10

sap online training

hello,I want to attend the sap online classes.what are the tools that i need to install. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nickray.nanni (talk • contribs) 06:25, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

how to know,which is best?

I am looking for a career booster in sap.recently I was shifted to Hyderabad.While I'm asking my friends about online training for sap classes,they are recommending (http://techiestraining.com/) this institute.They are telling that this is the only institute which is cost effective,having best faculty and most importantly they are assigning live projects for their students to improve the skills.These many +ves attracting me to join with techies.Before deciding I need your suggestion also.Please help me.

Thanks & regards nick — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nickray.nanni (talk • contribs) 06:38, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Online Training packages - software

I have project for my foundation degree in logistics. My project will involve moving new entrants training and induction from classroom/office based to an online environment.

I am struggling to find articles that will help me write a literature review for my project. I think I may be looking in the wrong areas of wikipedia or I may just be typing in the wrong keywords etc.

I am looking for any help in terms of links and wikipedia pages that could help me complete my literature review.

Thanks

Martin

Martin Mowatt (talk) 12:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Not a direct answer, but edX does an excellent job of providing free online training, and they may be willing to share their software, experiences, etc., with you. StuRat (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Laptop black startup screen

Hello Guys, I need a help from you for solving my laptop problem.

MY LAPTOP Toshiba satellite A215 s4697 AMD turion mobile technology 1.6 Ghz processor 1 GB RAM ATI Radeon X1200 Integrated graphics Windows XP Bought on 2007,Used monthly once/twice upto 2011(5 years) Constant usage for past two years(2012,2013)

PROBLEM Black screen on start up (NOT ALWAYS)

THINGS I HAVE DONE BUT FAILED: Hard Reset Many times New 2 GB RAM Installed(Tried on both slots) Installed New battery Glowed Bright light on screen Nothing appears Updated BIOS to latest version Updated Display driver and Catalyst software to latest version

sTRANGE THINGS Mostly Laptop display works in morning (After 8 hours of rest to laptop) After Updating BIOS it showed improvement but deteriorated

WHAT I HAVENT DONE Exploring /Cleaning Motherboard Opening Display panel & Checking connectivity Reballing GPU

Guys if you need extra details i ll give you.But please help me in solving this problem.Its really frustrating to fight with laptop to make it show the screen. Please dont tell REPLACE THE MOTHERBOAD/REPLACE THE LAPTOP — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.201.16.198 (talk) 13:17, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

So what you have is an "intermittent" problem which makes the screen go black. Intermittent problems are almost always hardware-related, so re-installing drivers/BIOS/OS is pointless. The difficulty in diagnosing it is that there are a huge range of hardware problems that could cause that - and any of them could potentially be intermittent. For example:

• The CPU could be faulty.
• The memory could be faulty.
• The power supply could be faulty.
• The GPU could be faulty.
• The video circuitry could be faulty.
• The on/off or reset buttons could be faulty.
• The display itself could be faulty.
• Any of the wiring between any of the things above could be faulty.
• Any one of several external connectors could be faulty.

It's essentially impossible for us to diagnose which of those things it is because any of them could cause the symptoms that you're seeing here if the fault is intermittent. Intermittent faults can come about for several reasons - bad solder joints, cracked circuit board traces, bent connectors, broken wires, static-shocked components....again, it's very hard to pin down which of those it is.

The only other symptom you've given us is that the problem happens mostly after the machine has been on for a while - but since all of the causes of intermittent faults can be temperature-dependent, that doesn't narrow the problem down very much.

Sadly, I think you need to get a professional involved. Someone who repairs these kinds of laptop frequently can try swapping out components until the thing that's broken is swapped out...that's expensive for you to do yourself because you could have to replace every part in the machine until the very last thing you try cures it...but for a professional with shelves full of spare parts, it's not so hard.

The problem with going to an expert is that your problem is intermittent. So (s)he might change (say) the motherboard - and the computer works when they reboot it. But how do you know that this fixes it? Maybe you have to reboot the machine 20 times with just the right set of temperatures for it to fail - so you might very well think you've fixed it when you haven't.

Worse still is that when you look at the set of things that I listed as possible causes, at least half of them are "Replace the motherboard" things - and doing that is something you've forbidden us to advise. Well, sorry, but "REPLACE THE MOTHERBOARD" is by far the most likely thing that'll cure your laptop. Just because you don't like this answer doesn't make it the wrong answer! Sadly, replacing the motherboard is expensive - and it still only has maybe a 70% chance of curing the problem.

May I suggest that you watch and listen very carefully when you boot it up and the screen stays black. Things that will help immensely in the diagnosis are:

• Do any LED's or other lights come on?
• Do you feel the hard drive spinning up?
• Do you feel/hear the heads on the hard drive moving?
• Do you feel/hear the fans whirring?
• Does the machine emit any beeps?
• Do you see any flicker of any kind from the display?
• If the machine boots with a blank screen, can you press the caps-lock/num-lock keys and see LED's or other indicators toggling on and off?

If the machine fails most when it's hot, go out and buy a can of "freezer spray" - it's made especially for electronics diagnosis. Squirting a shot of spray on various parts of the machine *MAY* let it boot correctly again - by carefully figuring out which part fails when it's hot but works when it's cold may tell you something.

You could try gently pressing down on various parts of the motherboard or other components and rebooting to see if some subtly cracked track or bad joint is the cause - try bending wires slightly one way or another - and, again, that'll help you narrow the problem down a little.

The trouble is that if one of these things does seem to help, you don't know for sure until you've done it dozens of times and the thing reliably works with pressure or freezer spray and reliably fails without it...but this is a slow and painstaking process...which may still not lead to an answer.

Finding problems like this yourself is very tough...especially with a laptop where so few of the parts can easily be swapped out. I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful here - but this is one of the hardest things to diagnose and chatting with someone online is the hardest way to track down problems.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:45, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• I don't disagree with anything Steve said, but if you don't hear unusual beeps on startup, then there's a decent chance that the problem is in the LCD display. I would try connecting an external monitor to the laptop, to see whether it shows anything when your screen is black. Looie496 (talk) 16:51, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• I agree. Specifically, the wires that connect the top of the laptop with the bottom move each time you open and close the laptop, leading to eventual failure. I have a laptop with the same problem. Most likely it's the backlight which is only getting intermittant power. If you shine a bright light at it when it goes black, you may still be able to see a faint image of what's supposed to be on the screen. Of course, you can't actually use it like this, so setting up an external monitor is the way to go. This does make your laptop no longer particularly portable, but fixing a laptop of that age the right way would be a waste of money, you'd do better to just buy a new one. StuRat (talk) 17:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the OP said that the bright-light-shone-at-the-screen test didn't produce anything useful - so it's not the backlight (or at least, not *JUST* the backlight) - and we're also told that the problem happens more later in the day (presumably when the laptop is hotter) - which suggests that the broken-wire-at-the-hinge problem isn't the issue here. I agree that setting up an external monitor would be a good test...but (as I said) a simpler test is to see whether the hard drive whirrs and the caps-lock LED toggles - which would both indicate that the computer has actually booted successfully but you just can't see the results. The CPU and memory both have to work for the hard drive to whirr - so that information would tell us a lot. But if there is no LED activity and no mechanical noises - then we have a much harder-to-diagnose problem.

Another interesting question for our OP is to ask whether the screen ever blanks out while the machine is in use. If not, then that's another massive clue. SteveBaker (talk) 18:17, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

If the backlight is out, and you shine a bright light at it to verify that something is displayed, I wouldn't exactly say that the bright light produces anything useful, it's just a debugging method. StuRat (talk) 00:28, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry - I wasn't being clear. In the original question, our OP says "Glowed Bright light on screen Nothing appears" - which I take to mean that (s)he already tried that test and there was still nothing visible on the screen. Which suggests that it's not the backlight that's faulty here. SteveBaker (talk) 15:55, 11 January 2014 (UTC)