Online perverts catch a dose

by Mitchell R Smith

Boots, the high street chemist, has today reported a rapid increase in sales of rubber gloves and strong antiseptic soap in response to a virus on the peer-to-peer file swapping network KaZaA.

The resulting infection is leaving late-night e-deviants with substantially more than the quick handful they'd been expecting.

KaZaA allows thousands of such "e-dophiles" to swap pornographic pictures and movies many of which are illegal in most countries without the risk of getting their front door kicked in by CID at some god-awful early hour on a Sunday morning and their PC searched for kiddie porn.

It is reported that this virus is highly contagious and fills the hard drive of an infected computer with copies of itself until the computer finally has no more space left on which to store pictures and movies of dirty old men tampering with their daughters.

We tried this morning to contact computer expert, glam rock legend and all round leader of the gang, Paul Gadd, aka Gary Glitter, to ask what he believed KaZaA users should do if they suspected their computers were infected. Although he was unavailable for comment as he is believed to be in Vietnam on a photography holiday, he had left a prepared statement with his manager in which he urged: "For Christ's sake, don't take your computer to PC World."

Evening all.
Got a problem with one of my desktops, on start up it runs for 3 or 4 seconds
and then cuts out. I suspect PSU is knacked, any ideas folks.
Thanks.

During a late night game of poker and after a few beers, we got on to the subject of Traffic (the film). Anyway, thinking it would be easy to download the film and watch it there and then, I set off on a mission....

one week later and I have made some progress but it hasnt been easy.

a) Managed to stumble into Bitcomet
b) Found and downloaded Traffic (took best part of 18 hours on broadband!!!)
c) Found the password to extract the files (after having downloaded Winrar)

Extracted a file to view, and now a get a message "unable to render video, decompressor not found".

Now:

a) Is there an easy way to download and view films?
b) What do I have to do to view it?
c) Films are made up of 100;s of individual files, do I have to view everyone to watch the film or can they be mergered somehow to watch a film without reloading new files every 10 minutes.
d) How can I burn the film to a DVD / CD

After this experience I think its easier just to buy the bloody DVD!!!

Mr Euro, you should be able to see the video after installing the X-Vid codec (video compressor/decompressor): http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/

Don't know about the other questions...

Thanks Kayak. It worked. The site was quite good also for other info.

Can films be burnt onto CD's? I have a CD writer and DVD viewer but not DVD writer! (I think).

Films are too long to fit on a CD. DVD writers are cheap though these days and they will read and write DVDs and CDs so you can just swap the old one out. It's really just a case of a few screws and a couple of plugs.

Mr Euro,

You need to download software called DVD Santa, which burns video to DVD format. You can create two CDs and swap over half way through the film, but I agree with Kayak, DVD writers are now only 30ish.

Cloudbase,

There are many possible porblems, but the most likely are that either the CPU is overheating or is knackered. If it was the memory you would get bleeping noise, video card or hard drive it wouldn't switch off.

If you are brave enough to open it up, have a look and see if the CPU fan is spinning, as sometimes they get clogged with dust and cat hair!

Adam....It does it on starting from cold and the CPU fan spins for the few seconds
that it trys to start. The first time it happened managed to get it going after several attempts pressing start. Am i correct in thinking that the load on the
PSU will be greatest on start up?

CB,

Sounds to me like either the CPU is over heating. Either the fan is Kaput, the coolant (the gel between the fan and the CPU) has dried up or the CPU is dead.

What kind of processor is it? Is it an AMD?

PSU rarely give up the ghost unless they blow, in which case you get a burning smell and they don't work at all. I have blown a few by not earthing myself while tinkering!

A couple of questions (well three actually) for you tech gurus:

- if you had to choose between AMD A64 3200+ and Pentium 4 630 which would you go for? (Intended usage is business apps like word processing and spreadsheets, and a bit of trading, perhaps with multiple monitors. No games...)

- Can you put PCI cards in PCI-E slots?

- If a drive is described as 16x DVD +\-RW (LS) will it save stuff to CDs, or does it only work with DVDs?

Thanks!

PeterG,
Q1 Either if fine I would use the cheapest !
Q2 Tes appaently but I have not done it.
Q3 It will also read and write cds but check the exact drive spec on the web.

ADAM......Thanks for your help. Yes it is a AMD Athlon XP 1700, one i purchased from Croc 3 years ago, been 100% reliable up to now.
It turns out the fault was in the main board, some of the capasitors around the CPU were faulty, it always did run fairly hot.
A new main board the only cure, so got a local guy fitting me one and upgrading
heat sink and fan.

Thanks Mr. Spaceman

Every problem solved seems to throw up another "challenge"..... :-)

Now have my wifi satellite link working like a dream but I have encountered a problem with my wireless keyboard when I'm working online. The wifi seems to upset the signal to the keyboard and it creates multiple characters on each key depression. (No problems at all with the wireless mouse I use.)

Is there some way I can shield the keyboard to stop the problem. The wifi is set directly from a USB socket in the laptop and the mouse/keyboard from a USB hub.

Any ideas?

I have a microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse and have suffered similar problems. It is very unlikely that it is interference from your wifi. I just force the keyboard to re-register with the receiver by pressing the connect button on the receiver and then on the keyboard.
skg

Any help for Internet explorer corrupted I have tried IE repair, and tried to reinstall and it still does not work, I am using Mozilla Firefox browser instead any ideas on how to fix it Windows 98 2nd edition.

Father-in-law has a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pro V2010 laptop with only 256 Mb memory and he's going to connect a 2nd monitor to it for trading. It desperately needs more memory but Fujitsu won't tell you how to install the new memory. I've tried taking the obvious slots and covers off to no avail. They say it's a dealer fit. Can anyone enlighten me - I've downloaded the full manual but no clues in there at all.


DRIVER Have you tried downloading a new copy from Microsoft:

Internet Explorer download page

SC, don't know if it's one of these, if it is click on the name for installation instructions.

Crucial search

Thanks Kayak. That's a great help, although it's not specific so I think I'll have another look at the machine. Probably under the keyboard.

SC

I'm a little surpised that the RAM slot isn't under one of the removable covers on the base of the machine as I believe most of them are.

I trade of a laptop (dell) and was able to add an extra 512Mb of memory without any problems at all although there are different types which are specific to each laptop dependent on how old it is.

I've also added a 2nd monitor witout any hitches and will be happy post up the setup instructions when you sort out the memory.