The Fake Geek - Part 28

ASUS P5K-V based computer will not boot

p5k-v will not boot

(One quick note before I start. When asking a question please give some more information. Merely posting a motherboard model number and saying it will not boot does not give me much to go on. But I shall try!)

When your computer does not boot you need to look at two things:

1)Where does it crash. At what specific point in booting.

2)Did you add any new software or hardware?

I would suggest trying to boot into safe mode. If you can do that then the computer is not totally lost. Turn the computer off and then back on and press F8 continually. A screen will pop up where you need to select: “Safe Mode with Networking.” If Safe Mode works then the problem is probably with the drivers and software being loaded at startup. What you will need to do is disable everything and enable something called diagnostic startup. Here’s how to do it:

First go to start>run. Type in “msconfig” and select Diagnostic Startup. Then click apply and select Restart. Windows should now boot normally but you’ll be missing all the software that normally runs at startup (like an antivirus.) What you now need to do is run msconfig again but this time go to the “Startup” tab. There will be a list of software. You need to enable one program at a time and restart after each enable. This is very important.

When you enable a program, restart and the computer doesn’t boot again you will have found the culprit and you will know what your dealing with.

(If this doesn’t work for anyone please ask a more detailed question and I’ll answer right away.)

The Fake Geek

Can I buy a sound card for my laptop?

Is there a sound card I can buy for my laptop?

Yes there is! As long as you have a free PCMCIA slot on your machine. The Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS is just what your looking for. Creative boasts that it’s sound quality is equal to the PCI card found in desktop computers.

The Audigy 2 ZS ranges in price at about $89-$120 from what I saw searching the web today.

The Fake Geek

How to make a home movie using Windows Movie Maker

How can I make a home movie? I have a mini dv camera and windows.

So you want to make a movie eh? The big question is what hardware and software to get. It’s all going to depend on what type of video your making. If it’s some grand indie film then your needs are obviously going to differ from someone trying to film their kid’s first steps. I’m going assume that it’s the latter and you need it for vacations and things like that.

First you’ve make a pretty good choice going with mini dv. I don’t really like the Hard Drive cameras because they compress the video much more so than digital tape. The only better choice you could have made is by going HD but you may not need that (expensive) quality for your needs.

First you want to shoot your video making sure that your recording on tape rather then the memory card (it does happen) then you need to find a way to transfer that video to your computer. The best way to do this would be to use a firewire cable and capture card.

The firewire cable may or may not have come with your camera. The usual way these things work is that you get a 4 pin to 6 pin cable (little end to big end.) The 4 pin end will plug into your camera and the 6 pin into your computer. Now if you have a laptop chances are your going to have a 4 pin port on the unit itself so all you have to get is a 4 pin to 4 pin cable (but make sure that you have firewire as some laptops don’t come with the firewire port at all.)

If you computer doesn’t have a firewire port then you need to buy a capture card. These should generally be no more then 50 bucks and you should get about three ports. On a desktop you can get a PCI card and on a laptop a PCMCIA expansion card. (You can also buy USB devices but those are tediously slow.)

After you’ve installed all the necessary hardware you need some software to be able to import the video stream into a file. If your just beginning your video making experience Windows Movie Maker is a basic editing studio (which you’ll quickly outgrow) that comes on every Windows computer from Windows ME and up and should do fine for your needs at the moment.

So plug in your camera and Autoplay will display it’s dialog box. Choose the option to import video into Movie Maker and follow the on screen prompts. The video will now reside on your hard drive and you can use Movie Maker to slice and dice all of it!

When you’ve outgrown Movie Maker try moving up to Pinnacle or if your a Pro then only Premiere or Final Cut Pro will do.

Happy editing!

The Fake Geek.

How do I backup my computer?

I think my computer is on it’s last legs and is gonna break soon. I have a lot of pictures and songs on it. What’s the best way to back everything up. CDs, DVDs……

Hey there! That’s a question I get all the time. Don’t backup on CDs unless you absolutely have to, they simply don’t store much information these days. Many people love to get a spindle of 100 DVD’s and back everything up on those but the problem there is that once you’ve backed everything up, those DVDs are unchangeable and you have to go out and buy more.

I would recommend buying an external Hard Drive. If it’s just for backup (and not for extra storage) then either a USB or Firewire drive should do fine. What you basically want to do is plug that drive into your computer (there might be some software or instructions that came with the drive make sure you follow those) and go to your “My Computer” folder. There you will find your new drive. Open it and just drag any files you want to back up in there.

Some Hard Drives (such as Comstars) will include backup software you can set to actually keep on eye on a specific folder and automatically back it up if any changes are made (such as the addition of new photos.)

You can also backup on Internet drives but the downside is that those are slow and expensive. I wouldn’t really recommend them unless you want to have your data safe in another physical location as well.

The Fake Geek

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