TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

I have just started looking around computer forums and have joined a couple.
I notice that sometimes a new person is chastized for a post. Often because it is an obvious kind of thing to long time members and tech pros. I am a complete novice with computers and I am willing to do some work of my own searching etc. When a search gets a few million hits it can take some time to find what you want especially when you dont always know the right search words.

I thought using forums such as this were kind of meant to help cut through all that searching and save some time. I agree that searching the forum itself should be done first.

I noticed in someones signature that there are no stupid questions. I hope that is truly the case on this forum.

greg
TechNovice

Yes, there is no such thing as a stupid question. Most of us try to help people to the best of our ability, but quite often there is someone who has to spoil the party. And if you take a look at who is doing it, nine times out of ten it is someone with very few posts who is just trying to get a rise out of someone else. As a mod, if I see this, I try to delete it as it brings no input to the thread, except problems.

Feel free to post questions, or just look around for knowledge. Enjoy the site, and

Welcome to TechSpot

Hello TechNovice and welcome to Techspot.

I agree with everything poertner says.

Don`t be put of by the few members who try to be as rude as possible.

The vast majority of folks here are very nice, and try to be helpful.

Regards Howard

i also understand how you feel. navigating through a tech site anywhere can be a problem especially when dont quite know what you are looking for.

as you may have found here, all the categories are listed, but first you still need to know which one to look for.
from what i can gather , techsperts are debating a beginners page.

from me being a newby on this site, i have been treated very well, and my questions answered respectfully, despite how it may have seemed, simple or pathetic to the techsperts

i would like to agree with tomrca, i am a newby here, but i have found the forum easy to navigate and most of the topics and threads have been useful to me.

That is great to hear. That is what we are trying to achieve. It souldn't be so great for people to search around if it was hard to find things. See ya both around

Society does not emphasize the importance of professionalism

don't worry- they'll get over it. You gotta have thick skin sometimes.

We're a community of computer users here. Most of us are pretty cool. There are always a few who had some p*ss in their cornflakes that morning.

Hehe I like, and agreed :-)

Don't have a clue as to what I am doing; I am the epitemy of a "Newby". Forgive me, I don't mean to be a pest but am just trying to figure out how to reply 2 someone and want to see if it works. Hope I don't get lost...

Hope I'm not screwing anybody up, I don't know what I'm doing and just want to see if I can figure out how to reply.

i assume that you mean replying to someone within a thread. if so, then you have already done it correctly.

I am a new member, I've been browsing trying to post a new message but I don't know how. Kindly help.

Mkhanka

hi mkhanka and welcome to techspot. what is the problem then i can tell you which forum to go to?

My Cd writer is not functioning properly. I use both Nero and Windows Media player. When I burn a CD it does not complete the whole tracks. For example when I burn a 14 track it will go on until at the middle and give a message that CD not recognised. Both softwares do that.I burned the same CD using another computer the burn was succesful.

My computer takes time to download information. Does it mean the hard drive is affected. The hard drive is 40GB. Does it need upgrading. Kindly advise what to do.

regarding your burn problem post new thread here
your second question post here
and also complete the specs for your pc plus internet speed.
the size of your hard drive doesn't determine download speed

Hi Im a newbie here & sorry if my question seems stupid but to me I'm having a right nightmare.
I went & bought a new computer from Dell, It was finaly delivered today but for love nor money I cant get my broadband connection to work by U.S.B or Ethernet. But when I put my old computer onto modem it works straight away ( usb) What am I doing wrong? Ive looked for updated drivers- that didnt work. Ive spent over an hour speaking to Virgin support-they couldnt help. Ive changed & swapped leads ( cat5e ) & ethernet.

Help me please someone

Its a new Optiplex 755 (Dell) computer
Motorola Surfboard 5101 Broadband modem

Hmm Hello to whomever is reading this, I will be honest I have no idea what I am doing, infact I think I shouldn't even have a PC for that matter, and I only recently started using the internet.. so as you can see I actually have no idea what I am doing, I just want to ask does anyone know what to do when you get an error message 80072745 for MSN, it has been getting on my nerves lately because I need to speak to my father which is in another country and it is always good to talk over MSN because it is easier. I tried to reinstall it, and to switch of my firewall but it isn't working, the same thing happens when I try to log into my yahoo messenger, although it doesn't give the error message it just doesn't log in.. Can anyone please help me out...

Thanks
Angie

this is my first post anywhere! to do this right, i would like to know where to post my question and how to include the Everest report on my sys specs...if this is nec. my question is much discussed, but i remain confused and dont want to do any irreversible damage by acting without asking? i love my computer...y'know? so, here it is - i have a single seagate sata drive (100 gb) on an hp pavilion dv2025nr ("designed for windows xp/vista compatible") running xp home sp2. i have done a factory restore from the recovery partition and the problem still remains the same. that is... the hdd is only recognized every fifth boot attempt. strange! here's how it goes...i shut it down thru the start menu, push power on, get blank black screen, push power off, on again, get hp screen where you can enter setup, wait, it goes to blank grey screen with blinking cursor and flashing words "os not found," power off, on again, blank black screen, power off, and then, IF AND ONLY IF I WAIT ABOUT HALF AN HOUR, power on and xp comes on just fine. this is consistent, but very inconvenient! help, please!

dont know if you want to know this now, but redirect me as nec...

dev mgr (IDE/ATAPI Controllers) has:

nVidia Serial ATA controller
Primary IDE CHANNEL
Secondary IDE channel
[3 ricoh mem card things]
Standard dual pci ide controller

i dont mind the idea of trying to run the sata hdd as ata or in ide mode or whatever that option is (sorry i am so clueless) but i dont know how to do that and the bios is only a partial build so i cant disable sata control.

thanks so much!