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[Bauglir]

We might have one already, but fuck searching through one or more pages of search results. Anyway, a general thread for quick computer questions. This probably isn't the place to go if you have a large, detailed problem or are doing something like building a new computer, but if you have a quick question that's leaving you stuck, that is what I intend this to be used for. This forum seems pretty savvy, and my google-fu is too weak to solve some of my own questions, so I thought I'd mooch off you guys.

Warning: I will probably not maintain this thread, at all. It is entirely possible that I will forget it exists. I'll do what I can, though, if it ever becomes necessary.

Anyway, my question is this. Sometimes, if I navigate to the address of a jpg, Firefox will insist upon opening an "Open with..." window sort of thing where it'll ask me to choose a program or just to save it to my hard drive. I want it to stop doing this, and just display the damn image as it does with most image locations. How do I make this happen? What information do I need to post, if the solution is not immediately obvious? Firefox 5.0, up to date, running on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.

[Stargrasper]

I've been using Chromium lately, but I can take a look.  Are you saying it loads some images within Firefox but not others?  What file formats does it ask you about?  Is it actually set to load images automatically in settings?

[YouR_DooM]

'Sup, I'll use this thread too

I'm normally a very computer savy person and manage to fix even the most annoying bugs, but today I just can't wrap my head around it.

Here is the current status quo: I just opened MSN and Windows Live Mail and here is what presented itself to me. EVERYTHING ELSE works fine. Just these two windows are all washed up. Maybe something with the AERO stuff went haywire? Also note how in pic two the tool bar is perfectly fine...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The incredible thing is that when I mouse over something, the effect goes slightly away and then slowly comes back. I have really no idea what's going on.

EDIT: Installed both again, nothing changes; updated AMD catalyst video drivers to 11.8, still nothing.

[ed boy]

I have two laptops, A and B. I also have two mice, 1 and 2. Originally, Laptop A had mouse 1 plugged into it, and laptop B had mouse 2 plugged into it. This worked fine for several months.

A couple of weeks ago, however, mouse 1 started becoming intermittent. I would hear the "USB item unplugged" noise, the light on the mouse would go off, and it would stop working. About a second later, The light would come on and it would start working. This would repeat every few seconds, even though the mouse remained plugged in the whole time. This would continue to happen when I changed what USB socket the mouse was plugged into. I managed to find a short term solution by plugging the mouse most but not all of the way in.

I wanted to see if it was to mouse or the laptop that was at fault, so I switched the mice between the two laptops. Laptop A worked fine with mouse 2, but Laptop B was having similar problems with mouse 1. I determined that the mouse was at fault, and chucked it out. That was a week ago.

However, in the past couple days I have noticed similar problems (although to a much lesser degree) when using mouse 2 with laptop A. Is it just coincidence, or is it possible the Laptop A is somehow damaging the mice?

[Stargrasper]

'Sup, I'll use this thread too

I'm normally a very computer savy person and manage to fix even the most annoying bugs, but today I just can't wrap my head around it.

Here is the current status quo: I just opened MSN and Windows Live Mail and here is what presented itself to me. EVERYTHING ELSE works fine. Just these two windows are all washed up. Maybe something with the AERO stuff went haywire? Also note how in pic two the tool bar is perfectly fine...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The incredible thing is that when I mouse over something, the effect goes slightly away and then slowly comes back. I have really no idea what's going on.

EDIT: Installed both again, nothing changes; updated AMD catalyst video drivers to 11.8, still nothing.

It looks to me like Windows is failing to completely load the programs.  You've already re-installed the programs and updated video drivers.  I'm assuming you rebooted the machine a half dozen times doing the above.  I'm also going to assume you've installed the correct graphics drivers.  You might want to check that one, though.

Since you seem to have been doing things right, I'm going to suggest you disable Aero for a moment and then try the programs.  To do this, go to Control Panel / Personalization and scroll down the list to basic themes.  Select one of those (which don't use Aero) and try the programs.  Let us know if that fixes things.

I have two laptops, A and B. I also have two mice, 1 and 2. Originally, Laptop A had mouse 1 plugged into it, and laptop B had mouse 2 plugged into it. This worked fine for several months.

A couple of weeks ago, however, mouse 1 started becoming intermittent. I would hear the "USB item unplugged" noise, the light on the mouse would go off, and it would stop working. About a second later, The light would come on and it would start working. This would repeat every few seconds, even though the mouse remained plugged in the whole time. This would continue to happen when I changed what USB socket the mouse was plugged into. I managed to find a short term solution by plugging the mouse most but not all of the way in.

I wanted to see if it was to mouse or the laptop that was at fault, so I switched the mice between the two laptops. Laptop A worked fine with mouse 2, but Laptop B was having similar problems with mouse 1. I determined that the mouse was at fault, and chucked it out. That was a week ago.

However, in the past couple days I have noticed similar problems (although to a much lesser degree) when using mouse 2 with laptop A. Is it just coincidence, or is it possible the Laptop A is somehow damaging the mice?

It's possible the laptop is frying mice.  Do other usb devices work alright in the machine?  Make sure the computer has the latest device drivers.  Make sure there's nothing wrong with the usb ports.  How old are the mice?  How do you use them?  This just feels like a broken wire in the connection problem that would result from worn or misused hardware.

Unplug all usb devices.  Go to Control Panel / Device Manager and remove all instances of the hardware in question and reboot.  Windows should re-install the hardware devices.

~~~

I'm going to do a little more searching for both of your problems.  I'm not happy with either solution, but this was what my intuition and a 30 minute google search came up with.

[Bauglir]

I've been using Chromium lately, but I can take a look.  Are you saying it loads some images within Firefox but not others?  What file formats does it ask you about?  Is it actually set to load images automatically in settings?

Yeah, it loads some in the window, but in other cases it'll have a window pop up that asks me to choose a program to open it with or save it. That "You have chosen to open X, what should Firefox do with this file" window. This has only happened with some .jpg files; all other images work correctly, including many other .jpg files. It is set to load images automatically. I'll see if I can't find a link to an image that causes this problem.

Warning: Ponies ahead

Looking at that link, I'm wondering if it's a problem with Facebook or something.

[Stargrasper]

I've been using Chromium lately, but I can take a look.  Are you saying it loads some images within Firefox but not others?  What file formats does it ask you about?  Is it actually set to load images automatically in settings?

Yeah, it loads some in the window, but in other cases it'll have a window pop up that asks me to choose a program to open it with or save it. That "You have chosen to open X, what should Firefox do with this file" window. This has only happened with some .jpg files; all other images work correctly, including many other .jpg files. It is set to load images automatically. I'll see if I can't find a link to an image that causes this problem.

Warning: Ponies ahead

Looking at that link, I'm wondering if it's a problem with Facebook or something.

Believe it or not, the link you provided is an exception to the rule.  The HTTP Content Header contains 'Content-Disposition:attachment'.  This tells the browser that it should not load the file into the browser and instead should download it.  The is standard and correct behavior for any browser and you'll find that any browser will download, instead of load, any image with that in the HTTP Content Header.

HTTP Content Header

[Bauglir]

Curses.

[YouR_DooM]

'Sup, I'll use this thread too

I'm normally a very computer savy person and manage to fix even the most annoying bugs, but today I just can't wrap my head around it.

Here is the current status quo: I just opened MSN and Windows Live Mail and here is what presented itself to me. EVERYTHING ELSE works fine. Just these two windows are all washed up. Maybe something with the AERO stuff went haywire? Also note how in pic two the tool bar is perfectly fine...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The incredible thing is that when I mouse over something, the effect goes slightly away and then slowly comes back. I have really no idea what's going on.

EDIT: Installed both again, nothing changes; updated AMD catalyst video drivers to 11.8, still nothing.

It looks to me like Windows is failing to completely load the programs.  You've already re-installed the programs and updated video drivers.  I'm assuming you rebooted the machine a half dozen times doing the above.  I'm also going to assume you've installed the correct graphics drivers.  You might want to check that one, though.

Since you seem to have been doing things right, I'm going to suggest you disable Aero for a moment and then try the programs.  To do this, go to Control Panel / Personalization and scroll down the list to basic themes.  Select one of those (which don't use Aero) and try the programs.  Let us know if that fixes things.

I finally figured it out. Apprarently the morphological filtering ( or how it's called ) option in the ATI Catalyst has this side-effect. Disabling it fixed it.

Pure luck in disabling that btw...

[Stargrasper]

I finally figured it out. Apprarently the morphological filtering ( or how it's called ) option in the ATI Catalyst has this side-effect. Disabling it fixed it.

Pure luck in disabling that btw...

You have no idea just how much tech support is pure luck and guesswork.

Here's the XKCD Tech Support Flow Chart.  Note the option "Pick one at random".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Conrad]

Weird network question.

Problem:

One computer is invisible to others connected to the modem. All other computers can see each other. I can't see other computers from this one, nor can I see it from others. It claims to be on an entirely different network. Without switching it from wired to wireless, it won't acknowledge that the other network exists.

How it came to be:

My mother called the internet people to fix the internet (was down for unknown reasons). My mother says that the people separated this computer (remotely, never came to the house) from the others to fix it (why?). I called them to get details and they said it was a computer issue and out of their zone.

Why it matters:

We use the 'invisible' computer as the hub of the networking. It's connected to the best printer in the house and we also use it for transferring files between computers.

Possibly useless details:

Invisible computer is a desktop running Windows 7. It also has a wireless card.
Other computers consist of two laptops on Windows 7, a netbook and a laptop on Vista and a desktop on XP.

[Stargrasper]

Weird network question.

Problem:

One computer is invisible to others connected to the modem. All other computers can see each other. I can't see other computers from this one, nor can I see it from others. It claims to be on an entirely different network. Without switching it from wired to wireless, it won't acknowledge that the other network exists.

How it came to be:

My mother called the internet people to fix the internet (was down for unknown reasons). My mother says that the people separated this computer (remotely, never came to the house) from the others to fix it (why?). I called them to get details and they said it was a computer issue and out of their zone.

Why it matters:

We use the 'invisible' computer as the hub of the networking. It's connected to the best printer in the house and we also use it for transferring files between computers.

Possibly useless details:

Invisible computer is a desktop running Windows 7. It also has a wireless card.
Other computers consist of two laptops on Windows 7, a netbook and a laptop on Vista and a desktop on XP.

Do all of the computers (including the offender) connect to the same router?  How do they connect to it?  It's possible you have 2 subnets.

This sounds like a router issue.  Try reseting (and possibly factory resetting, there will be a button on the back or bottom for that) the router.  Note that if you have special configurations, including encryption (password access), a factory reset will whip it out.

[Bauglir]

Let's say I have data from a number of experiments, saved in Excel files. How could I use OpenOffice (or LibreOffice, if you prefer) to create the same graph for each experiment? Basically, I want to create a bunch of graphs that are exactly the same, except that the actual value of each data point might change. It would be really handy to be able to do this automatically, because there are potentially hundreds of experiments and 3 to 6 graphs needed apiece.

[Haschel]

I was thinking about posting a graphical issue I had been having with firefox for several weeks, but after skimming through this thread I noticed this

I finally figured it out. Apprarently the morphological filtering ( or how it's called ) option in the ATI Catalyst has this side-effect. Disabling it fixed it.

And then it was fixed. Funny how that works out.

[Detonate]

How useful is Lavalys' Everest program anymore? I've heard that it was discontinued and a new product had been released in it's place, but it's still pretty useful for me.