Dustpuppy

Azureus is good, the only problem is that it keeps on bugging you to update, and then the updates break the programme The best way to upgrade is just to install the newest version - so you might as well do that at the beginning, rather than go from an old rpm.

I've got it back from the college IT people - they managed to get the data off it (phew) but no joy with the lappy itself. They tried different ram, mine in another machine, and the ram is fine.

Looking back on this thread, I'm not sure I did actually unplug the cmos battery - I've been googling, and it seems to be a green caterpillar-shaped thing. I've looked in the laptop but can't find anything that looks like that. Where is it in the laptop?

Thanks!

The lappy is now in the hands of the college IT guys. They didn't look hopeful about it, but they are at least getting the data off the harddrive. They've already pulled off one miracle with this machine about a year ago, here's hoping they can do it again.

Here's hoping it's the ram... I'm going to take it in to college and see if the computing people can do anything with it.

I've just been through my external backups and made the un-pleasing discovery that my USB key is dead, and so the last full backup I have is dated 30 March :o . So here's another qu - assuming it's not a harddrive problem, can I mount the laptop harddrive in my desktop in any way? Basically, if I have a functioning laptop harddrive, how do I get the data off it without a functioning laptop?

Unplugged the cmos battery for the whole of ER and it's still not working. Did the reset button, ditto.

Just off to see how much laptop ram costs...

How do I do that if I can't get into the bios??

I can't get into the bios - nothing happens when I try. A live CD doesn't do anything either.

My laptop (Dell Inspiron 5000e) seems to have died, but I can't afford to bury it prematurely. I've got a few months of my PhD left and that was the machine I was writing it on... so if I could get it back just for a while I would be very happy! I also have no money for a new one until I get I job (which won't be until I write up... you get the picture).

I was using Kile and xpdf when the whole machine locked up completely - nothing was changing on the screen (including the clock and the eth0 icon when I pulled the lan cable out), no response to any keypresses, and I couldn't restart by pressing the button. The only way to turn it off was to unplug the power cable and take the battery out. Then the fun started - it wouldn't boot. When I press the on button the power light comes on, and the first whirring noise (that always comes first at boot) happens, and then nothing. The power light stays on, but there's no noises and nothing on the screen. The only thing I can do is take the battery out to turn it off.

I've tried rebooting several times, and always got the same thing. I tried booting from floppy and CD, but neither drives came on at all - it's like the BIOS doesn't even get to the stage of checking for boot media. No lights other than the power supply light come on, not a peek out of the harddrive light.

Please please please please help me, I don't know where to go from here, or what could be causing the problem.

Thankyou!

I added these to the mouse bit of xorg:

Option "Emulate3Buttons"

Option "Emulate3Timeout100"

It seems to be quite easy with my laptop buttons - they're both big enough to be fairly easy to press together.

Is there a way of making copy and paste by highlighting and then clicking the middle mouse button work when there isn't a middle mouse button? My laptop (see sig) has a touchpad and two buttons underneath it. I'm so used to mouse copying that I keep on forgetting to do ctrl-c to copy the highlighted text, and this is bugging me! What I'd really like to do is be able to copy by highlighting, and then paste by pressing one button (or even ctrl-v). Is this possible?

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

Arrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhh!!! That means I do need new glasses after all. I was so hoping it was the display.

Thanks for the explanation, I really appreciate it. And I'll be booking an eye test tomorrow. And I do eat my greens!

If you've set printing up in the MCC then it should work with any app as you add it. Make sure in the print dialogue box that the correct printer is selected cos sometimes that goes wonky. Glad it's working, though!

One day I won't skim-read...

OK, you need to set up the printers in the Mandrake control centre, not the KDE control centre as you have been doing. These are easily confused and has to be one of the biggest newbie-design problems of Mandrake! They are respectively known as "configure your computer" and "configure your desktop". The way to tell them apart is that you need to enter the root password to get the Mandrake control centre but not to get the KDE one.

OK, so do alt-F2 and enter "mcc". Then enter your root password when prompted. Go to "hardware" then "printers". This should then be straightforward. Famous last words, I know. Get back if its not!

[cross-posted]

My laptop (see sig) is a Dell Inspiron 5000e and I really need to change the refresh rate. I can't tolerate 60Hz light, and whenever I use my laptop for longer than an hour or so it makes me feel tired and sick. The real prob lem is, I'm trying to write up my PhD thesis on this thing! A bit of googling has convinced me I can crank it up to 70 or even 75Hz without frying it, but I can't find how to. It's currently on 1024x786 resolution, but there isn't a modeline for that in Xorg.conf :unsure:

Please please please help. I'll put you in my acknowledgements page if you do...

Make sure your firewall's off - either in the mcc "security" section or

su

service shorewall stop

Install via urpmi. Top right of this page, Easy-Urpmi. Set up your sources, then as root do

urpmi abiword

[edited because I can't tell left from right]

lol, maybe it was a relative :D At least I didn't use compressed air...

bvc - I'd just started looking at whether I could afford a TFT (answer: probably not). Ah well...

devries - I'd tried tightening it, maybe it was dust or something that needed it to be taken out fully. I should've done it before - my uncle always told me that 9 times out of 10 any electrical fault can be solved with an "engineers' joggle". This is a trick of the trade and entails... taking everything apart and putting it back together again

(ETA pedantic apostrophe)

Thanks for all your replies!

I tried it with another monitor, and there wan't any distortion. The new monitor was on a different bit of the desk, so I moved the old one to that position and plugged it in. No distortion! I moved it back to where it's always been. No distortion again!

It''s Magic!

(or something)

Thanks everyone!

My monitor's started playing up this morning - what look like little horizontal lines of interference flickering around the screen. I've looked for em sources around it and there aren't any that weren't there yesterday. I've degaussed and tried playing around with the vrefresh rates, but no luck. Is it dying? It's about 18 months old...

Button up the top of the screen - EasyUrpmi. Add your source, then go to the command line, su to root and do

urpmi abiword

How do I configure Shorewall to let the computers on my LAN see each other's NFS shared directories? I've tried opening port 111 for udp and tcp on them all, but that doesn't seem to work.

Another vote for the Gimp.

Er... where? Where's the charging happening? I can't find anything on zarg.org.

Just to say - thankyou, Ix. I have now shifted my ~ directory on to the new hd, and it worked fine (slight panic when rebooting and KDE wouldn't load - turned out to be it needed write permission and didn't have it, so I chmodded it in command line and it worked).

For some reason it wouldn't let me move the entire /home to the new hd, but I could move ~.

I now have lots more room for my mp3s