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Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:08:28 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline 		I used to be able to watch video on my laptop without it stopping.
Now it pauses all the time.  What do I have to do to get it continuous again?
As you can tell, I'm not techy at all.   I probably have at least ten thousand photos loaded on to the laptop.  Would this slow things down?  Should I be saving my pics onto my hard drive?
Help!

edited to fix typos and to mention that I'm missing my "w" up, down, right and left arrow keys and I have a sticky "c" "p" and "m"

< Message edited by Aileen1968 -- 1/23/2008 7:10:30 PM >

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:13:25 PM   
CuriousLord


Posts: 3911
Joined: 4/3/2007
Status: offline 		It could be a lot of different things, so let's narrow it down.

-Is the video off the net, DVD, harddrive, or other?
-Have you been experiencing any issues with viruses, popups, spyware, etc?
-Do you keep more programs open at a time now, or restart the computer less often?
-Do you have new anti-virus or similar programs since the problem occured?

The most common fix to this problem would be cleaning your DVD, if it's off one.. and, very carefully (by someone who knows how to), perhaps cleaning the laser window in the player itself.  Like old fashion records, CD's and DVD's can skip when they can't read the surface of the disc properly.  When DVD's do it, thanks to new-ish technology, they can pick up where they left off at.

If your DVD or the DVD player has some dust or so on it, it can cause this skipping.  Since this is a relatively common problem and it's relatively easily fixed, it may be a good first shot.

PS-  Keyboards cost like $20, sometimes not even that much.  If it's a laptop, you can still just plug a keyboard into it and it should work just fine without installing anything.  It's a popular solution to aging keyboards and for people who just don't like the smaller keys on laptops. (Many people keep the larger keyboard at their desk or where ever they happen to use the laptop often, then just use the normal keyboard on it when they go somewhere.)

Computer repair people can also replace laptop keyboards.  Mine's always been replaced under warrentee, so I don't know how much this might cost.

< Message edited by CuriousLord -- 1/23/2008 7:16:14 PM >

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:17:41 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: CuriousLord

It could be a lot of different things, so let's narrow it down.

-Is the video off the net, DVD, harddrive, or other?
-Have you been experiencing any issues with viruses, popups, spyware, etc?
-Do you keep more programs open at a time now, or restart the computer less often?
-Do you have new anti-virus or similar programs since the problem occured?

The most common fix to this problem would be cleaning your DVD, if it's off one.. and, very carefully (by someone who knows how to), perhaps cleaning the laser window in the player itself.  Like old fashion records, CD's and DVD's can skip when they can't read the surface of the disc properly.  When DVD's do it, thanks to new-ish technology, they can pick up where they left off at.

If your DVD or the DVD player has some dust or so on it, it can cause this skipping.  Since this is a relatively common problem and it's relatively easily fixed, it may be a good first shot.


The video is off the net...youtube and such.
I've had the same antivirus for almost a year now.  It scans every morning. 
I'm using AVG.
I usually have about three windows open.  That hasn't changed.  I do shutdown a lot less lately though.

< Message edited by Aileen1968 -- 1/23/2008 7:18:19 PM >

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:18:24 PM   
cyberdude611


Posts: 2596
Joined: 5/7/2006
Status: offline 		Is that the only thing that is slowing down? If the whole system is slow it could mean you might have a virus, trojan or spyware or something. If it is just the video on the internet that is slow it could be your internet connection. It could be just congestion. Is it slow all the time?

Also try restarting the computer. You could have part of a program screwing around in memory.

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:19:57 PM   
farglebargle


Posts: 10715
Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline 		Either you have a program running which is screwing up your bandwidth/video rendering, or *perhaps* the last run up windows update got a core library?

Hey, are you plugged into a hub/switch, or using WiFi?

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It's not every generation that gets to watch a civilization fall. Looks like we're in for a hell of a show.

ברוך אתה, אדוני אלוקינו, ריבון העולמים, מי יוצר צמחים ריחניים

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:20:23 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline 		Every part of my computer is slow.  It takes forever to boot up.  This has been like this for about four months now.  It's getting annoying.

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:22:34 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle

Either you have a program running which is screwing up your bandwidth/video rendering, or *perhaps* the last run up windows update got a core library?

Hey, are you plugged into a hub/switch, or using WiFi?


ok...how can I tell what programs are running?
I'm using Wifi (I think...lol)

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:22:51 PM   
farglebargle


Posts: 10715
Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline 		OH, you just need to brain-wipe the thing, and reload it from scratch.



_____________________________

It's not every generation that gets to watch a civilization fall. Looks like we're in for a hell of a show.

ברוך אתה, אדוני אלוקינו, ריבון העולמים, מי יוצר צמחים ריחניים

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:24:13 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline 		Noooooooo.  Bad answer.

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:26:05 PM   
farglebargle


Posts: 10715
Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline 		No... It's the correct answer, which you just didn't want to hear.

Which probably points to, from a sysadmin POV, a bigger issue.

You don't have the backups right now which would be needed to restore the data, do you?

_____________________________

It's not every generation that gets to watch a civilization fall. Looks like we're in for a hell of a show.

ברוך אתה, אדוני אלוקינו, ריבון העולמים, מי יוצר צמחים ריחניים

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:26:52 PM   
CuriousLord


Posts: 3911
Joined: 4/3/2007
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Aileen1968

The video is off the net...youtube and such.
I've had the same antivirus for almost a year now.  It scans every morning. 
I'm using AVG.
I usually have about three windows open.  That hasn't changed.  I do shutdown a lot less lately though.


AVG?  Ick!  My slave just got that!  (Her mom bought three linscenses and gave her a copy.  =/)  She can't run anything now, so she's unstalling it.  It's slowed down a lot for her.  But, if you had it and it was working fine before, that's probably not it.  (Unless they made the damn thing more paranoid in a recent patch.)

Possible ideas:
-It could be your Internet provider getting more people on its service, causing the connection to be slower.  (Videos stop and slow down online when they don't have enough preloaded in their buffer.)
-It could be the site providing the video.  (Unlikely if several sites have this problem.)
-You might have spyware, but I'm under the impression AVG is pretty paranoid, so this doesn't seem that likely.


Things you can do:
-Defragment your harddrive. (Computer does it for you for free; it's recommended you do it ever so often.  It's rare that it causes a great increase in computer speed, but computers slowly become fragmented as you work with them; so, it can be worth doing now and then.)
-Check to see if your computer's memory report matches what you know your computer should have (from either your recollection or some computer documentation).  Since, sometimes, memory chips get fried and fail, which might've hurt it.
-Download something or otherwise test your download rate to see if your connection's slower now.
-If you're on a home network, trying when all the other computers on it are turned off.


On my dorm connection, I pause online movies to let them build up their buffer (giving it a chance to download more of the movie) before playing it.

Oh!  Okay, let's see if I'm right about the buffer being an issue.

When you play a movie from YouTube, you'll notice two things moving across the bar.  The first is a ticker which shows which part of the movie's time line you're on, and the second is the bar itself filling in (to show how much of the movie's been downloaded into the buffer already).  Is your ticker catching up to the end of the buffed part of the movie when it pauses?

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:30:21 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle
You don't have the backups right now which would be needed to restore the data, do you?


  What do you think?
Do I have a virus?  And if I back things up now do I also back up the virus???

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:33:35 PM   
CuriousLord


Posts: 3911
Joined: 4/3/2007
Status: offline 		From what you're describing, it really doesn't sound like a virus, so no worries there.  (I mean, it might be, but it doesn't seem very likely.)

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:37:41 PM   
farglebargle


Posts: 10715
Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Aileen1968

quote:

ORIGINAL: farglebargle
You don't have the backups right now which would be needed to restore the data, do you?


  What do you think?
Do I have a virus?  And if I back things up now do I also back up the virus???


I think you *might* have a spyware infection, or perhaps Windows is just getting alzheimers. Maybe a recent Windows Update screwed up a program library.

If you only copy over your DATA files, it's unlikely you'd reinfect the freshly loaded PC.


_____________________________

It's not every generation that gets to watch a civilization fall. Looks like we're in for a hell of a show.

ברוך אתה, אדוני אלוקינו, ריבון העולמים, מי יוצר צמחים ריחניים

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:39:03 PM   
Honsoku


Posts: 422
Joined: 6/26/2007
Status: offline 		Worst case scenario: Hard drive failure is developing (they do have a limited lifespan). My computer did something similar, getting worse until the day the drive failed. Though I would expect this to happen faster than four months. Other than that, others have covered most anything else. Back your drive up and make sure you have significant free hard drive space, as your computer may be relying on having some available for virtual memory use.

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:39:28 PM   
OrionTheWolf


Posts: 7803
Joined: 10/11/2006
Status: offline 		I agree. It is likely that you just have too many processes running now that the computer is older, that the drive is slightly fragmented, and there are likely some system files that have suffered minor physical damage (it happens over time). If you want the best answer, farg had it, if you want the easiest answer, then follow what CL said. If you were one of my clients, I would recommend saving the My Documents and any other critical data, to an external source, reformat the hard drive and reload windows. Then reinstall all your software. It may take a while but the computer will be back to the speed it was, when you first bought it. Unless there is a hardware problem, but your symptoms do not sound like it.


quote:

ORIGINAL: CuriousLord

From what you're describing, it really doesn't sound like a virus, so no worries there.  (I mean, it might be, but it doesn't seem very likely.)


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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:40:20 PM   
farglebargle


Posts: 10715
Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Honsoku

Worst case scenario: Hard drive failure is developing (they do have a limited lifespan). My computer did something similar, getting worse until the day the drive failed. Though I would expect this to happen faster than four months. Other than that, others have covered most anything else. Back your drive up and make sure you have significant free hard drive space, as your computer may be relying on having some available for virtual memory use.



HD failure screwing up Virtual Memory... I like that hypothesis... I wonder what a SMART self-test on the drive would show?

_____________________________

It's not every generation that gets to watch a civilization fall. Looks like we're in for a hell of a show.

ברוך אתה, אדוני אלוקינו, ריבון העולמים, מי יוצר צמחים ריחניים

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:44:11 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline 		Soooooo....in English I should back up my pics and ipod stuff and any documents that are important and then clear everything out.

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RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:48:43 PM   
farglebargle


Posts: 10715
Joined: 6/15/2005
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline 		Yeah. Unless it's a hardware failure, that's the path of least resistance.

_____________________________

It's not every generation that gets to watch a civilization fall. Looks like we're in for a hell of a show.

ברוך אתה, אדוני אלוקינו, ריבון העולמים, מי יוצר צמחים ריחניים

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Profile   Post #: 19
RE: Computer Question - 1/23/2008 7:51:28 PM   
Aileen1968


Posts: 6062
Joined: 12/12/2007
From: I miss Shore, New Jersey
Status: offline 		Well that all sucks. 

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