Ai's Official Tech Support Thread

[愛]

Originally Posted by Mecha Cow

So I've been playing Mass Effect 2 on PC recently and the first one before that. The game runs just fine, but I've noticed that every time after I quit playing, my PC slows down to a crawl. It's generally been getting slower as of late for some reason, but right after I've played a game it's damn near useless.

Although I almost never play games on it, I have a reasonably heavy PC, and like I said, aside from the occasionally long load times the game runs on the highest settings without any problems. I do find it odd that my PC has become so much slower now that I've started playing games on it. Any ideas?

Have you tried any other games and have this kind of problem? It could just be poor programming on the company's end. I have a similar problem with the latest version of Windows Media Player on Window 7, as whenever I play a song, both of my cores jump up to 100% usage. Pretty ridiculous.

Also, when you start to install and uninstall games, and the same with deleting and adding files, the computer gets fragmented. This, of course, makes it take longer to load files and whatnot. If you defragment your computer regularly, then this probably isn't an issue, though something to think about.

[Roland]

I need help with visual radio on my Nokia. I want to stream radio with visual radio but i don't how to get it working and what visual service id is?

[Peanut]

I really hate f*cking computers and anything to do with them.

Basically, I was gone for a long time for several reasons, the biggest of which being my job and my move into a new place with my fiance. So I'm here now, and everything is awesome, except the f*cking internet.

Anyways, I've set up a ton of wireless networks in multiple family members/friends houses without a hitch, but for some retarded reason, I simply can't get my own to work. At least for the duration.

The wireless router I got is probably a piece of sh*t (a TP-Link, something I had never heard of until my dad brought it over as a moving gift), but I know it works. I had everything up and running perfectly for about a week, then this weekend the thing suddenly sh*t the bed. All of a sudden, I'm getting DNS errors whenever I try to connect to the internet via my wireless network. The problem was there in the beginning where my PC was concerned, but I told the connection to use my specific DNS and it worked fine.

Now everything is f*cked. Nothing I've tried is working out at all. I got that my connection is fine, my wireless is fine, it just won't hit up the DNS server and give me my f*cking interweb. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!

[sdp]

Random question:

Is the Technodrome slow for anyone else? Its been like this for over a month, the technodrome takes a while to load. This doesn't happen to any other website or forum, I've tried different browsers/PCs and even two ISPs. All of this seems to point out its the websites server but I have yet to see anyone complain about it so I keep thinking the problem must be on my end...

[Krang]

Personally, I haven't noticed any issues with load times lately. All pages load within a few seconds for me, both from home and from work. Is anyone else experiencing slow load times? Also, sdp, does the main site load slowly for you as well, or is it just the forums? They are on two different servers, so that might help determine the cause of the problem.

[sdp]

Main site loads fast for me its just the forums. The forums take a couple of seconds for it to start loading though when it does it loads the page quickly, its almost as if once the server allows it to connect it loads things at a normal speed..
Other vbulletin forums load just fine for me though, even other Version 3.8.5 like this site has. I do have a similar problem on another site, however that site constantly has server problems especially at the release of a new Pokemon game so I don't think they are related.

Its not a recent problem, its been almost two months which is why I decided to ask, I'm starting to think it may be my ISP since I've had plenty of problems with them but I believe it started before I switched ISPs because I remember checking and it loaded slow on both, not to mention i've done everything like cleared my cache/flushed my dns.

[Volvagia]

The forums load pretty slowly for me too, I'm starting to think that the problem for me is Firefox, I tried Safari and IE8 too and Safari is just as slow as FF but the forums loaded fast with IE8. I'm just going to have to live with this because I'm not going to switch browser.

[Krang]

Originally Posted by sdp

Main site loads fast for me its just the forums.

In that case, since the two servers are located in the same datacenter, it seems unlikely that it's a routing issue between you and the server. Do the load times improve depending on what time of the day you visit, or is it always slow? Also, about how many people are typically online (including guests) when you visit?

The forums take a couple of seconds for it to start loading though when it does it loads the page quickly, its almost as if once the server allows it to connect it loads things at a normal speed..

Is that just on the first page load, or is it every time you load a page?

My guess so far is that the server is under heavy load at certain times of the day, which is delaying the processes that run the forums. We're currently on a shared server, so if any of the other sites hosted on it are receiving a lot of visitors, it will slow things down for everyone else, too.

Originally Posted by Volvagia

The forums load pretty slowly for me too, I'm starting to think that the problem for me is Firefox, I tried Safari and IE8 too and Safari is just as slow as FF but the forums loaded fast with IE8. I'm just going to have to live with this because I'm not going to switch browser.

Hmm, that's strange that the browser would have any effect on the load times. Do the pages load for you in Firefox the same way sdp described above?

[Volvagia]

Yes every page takes a few seconds before it starts loading.

[Krang]

If you get a chance, could you try visiting the forums either a few hours earlier or a few hours later than you usually do and let me know if the problem is still there? It's hard to tell at this point whether this is a server problem (which is what it seems like based on the symptoms posted so far) or a local configuration problem (which is what it seems like based on the fact that only two people have mentioned this problem).

[sdp]

Yeah its every time I load a new page, I'm pretty sure users don't matter as I've seen few and many, unsure about guests. I've visited the site at pretty much most hours of the day including very late and early morning, weekdays etc (US central), I don't visit too often but I don't have a "time" that I usually visit and like I mentioned its been two months or more.

While annoying, since I don't spend much time here, I can deal with it, I was just wondering if anyone else had the problem because if it was indeed only my problem I want to find a way to fix it.

Edit: Hey Krang thanks for trying to help, I switched ISPs and the forums now load perfectly, I have no idea why that ISP would intentionally slow down this website, I didn't experience it on any other.

[Cure]

When I use MSN, I appear offline to all my contacts. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it and nothing. I looked up on a website and tried deleting certain files pertaining to my contact list and nothing. I even tried going through meebo.com and downloading Pidgin and still everyone says I appear offline.

Any advice short of creating another account? Thanks.

[Machias Banshee]

Hey AI,

Lately, I've noticed that my laptop's been slowing down a considerable amount the past few weeks. I'm thinking I have too many background programs running. I currently have AVG 10, IOBit360 and Malwarebytes all running in some form in the background. Any suggestions on turning off options or programs?

Firefox seems to use a huge amount of memory - could switching to Internet Explorer use less?

[愛]

Switching to Google Chrome will cut your memory usage considerably. As for the antivirus and malwarebytes...I never use them, but they shouldn't be too big of a memory hog as long as you aren't running them constantly. Defrag your hard drive, also, and see if it helps.

Let me know how it works out!

[Machias Banshee]

Helped a LOT, thank you!

[Storm Wolf]

Looks like this thread has been dead for a while.......

Anyways...I'm trying to figure out whats been going on with my internet. I used to chalk it up to my old laptop being outdated and full to the brim with BS but now that I have a brand new laptop I can no longer blame it on that.

My internet is constantly "redirecting" me to pages I have no interest in. I click on link for video games and it "redirects" me to a site about puppies. It does this constantly. At first I thought it was google as it happened more often when I used google search engine. Then I thought Explorer was the problem so I downloaded Chrome. I'm still having this issue!

I have a popup blocker and I scanned the computer with the anti virus but nothing comes up.

It's also been booting me off the internet ALOT! I don't think it's the wireless because my 360 is directly connected to my router and I'm being kicked off Live all the time as well.

This is very frustrating and I'm wondering if it has something to do with the internet provider?

Your infinite wisdom is appreciated!

[Machias Banshee]

I was gonna use Krutch's thread to ask this, but I didn't want to leech...

Oh Great and Powerful Ai...

I am looking into some serious investments for my graphic designing/illustration. I'm currently looking at two different pen tablets, and I'm hoping to get some pointers... I intend to use Adobe Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator and Pinnacle Studios on this machine.

Wacom Cintiq 12WX 12-Inch Pen Display

P-Active 19-inch LCD Monitor Pen Tablet For Professionals XPC1910A

The prices are pretty similar (Cintiq 999$, P-Active 849$), but my major concern is if anyone's familiar with these and how reliable they are. They give no listings about ram or storage for any of these items! I wanted to take the extra money for the interactive screen, because I just don't have the hand-eye coordination for the other wacom tablets... and there's NO desktop computers out there with the pen capability that I could find. If I could save money and do that, I probably would...

Any pointers on this will be Greatly appreciated...

~Machi

[愛]

Have you looked into possibly getting a complete tablet PC? It's basically a laptop with a swivel monitor that will allow you to write/draw on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...ame=Tablet-PCs

You can look around here and see what you like. As for separate tablets plugging into other computers, I don't have much experience with them. Sorry.

[TheCanadiandrome]

do u know anything about how to fix a PS3 that won't update the firmware? i've successfully downloaded the most recent update, but the system keeps crappin out at 30% install

[Jester]

How do I resolve a "error 1327.invalid drive h:\" error?