I sincerely hope everyone's having fun here. Personally this is all WAY too technical for me and I'm going to check out another thread

we're having a ball...

dammit, it's gone midnight again. I need some sleeep.

Ach, thanks PSD - I was getting there too (only had to eliminate the speech marks and I'd have made it, but I got distracted by something shiny!)

You're right though; I shan't be incorporating too much code or indeed graphics and certainly not for the hell of it. I'd also like to think I'm intelligent enough to convey a thought, impression or feeling without resorting to using an emoticon at the end of every line, though I do confess they are kinda amusing from time to time... heh.

Hmm... Now I know why a new thread grew massively overnight.

Remember what happened last time we got silly with HTML and broke the old Fforum.

And Dave, I thought you were aiming for an early night !

Ptolemy... where did you get that sheep? It's just so disconcertingly watchable!



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

I like him. Can we get a dodo to do the same?

Graphics for the hell of it? Would I do that?

[www.geocities.com]



--------------

There's a hole in my creativity bucket and it's all leaked out.

Hi Sarah,

Originally, the sheep came from

[www.artie.com]

- there's loads more similar graphics there - about 15,000 in all I think! I can't remember seeing a dodo but I'm really looking forward to seeing someone prove me wrong...

Thanks! I shall have a good look when I have time.



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Just get a grey chicken, no-one'll know...

Well, we will NOW!

I've just popped in cos I know some of you computer geeks were hanging around in here and my PC is having a temper tantrum, it is refusing point blank to play any audio CD's and quite blatantly denying that there is a disc in there in the first place. This is what I've tried so far:
Staring really hard at it. This puts fear of gsd into hubby and kids but not working on PC.
repeatedly telling it to play disc in the hope that pester power will wear it down and it'll do it while sighing ok but just this once.
went and made a cup of coffee so that the computer fairy could sort it out while I wasn't looking.
As usual all this was futile, discs were playing fine this a.m so do you think this is fatal?
If you can't fix computer for me then at least make me laugh cos I'll bet this has got a big invoice with lots of 0000's attached to it somewhere.

Holly

Is it just one disc that isn't palying, or have you tried lots?

If you've just tried one, is it a disc you haven't tried playing on th PC before (some modern CDs are copy-protected, and won't play on any computer, to stop you copying them -- especially ones produced by big music labels like EMI and Universal).

If it's affecting all CDs, have you tried cleaning your CD drive (for this you'll need a special CD cleaning disc -- available in any music store, and most computer stores too)

You could also try rebooting your computer -- can work wonders!

If none of the above works, a new CD drive could set you back as little as £50.

Hope some of that helps



Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.

thanks Guy, wont play any CDs including those it has condescended to play before, rebooting didn't sort it and neither did just giving it a good booting, but cleaning it kind of makes sense so I'll go buy a disc in a bit, will let you know what happens, (like you can't wait) thanks again for advice, do you know how to reupholster chairs by any chance?

Have you tried Impact Technology on your CD (not) player? The coaxing mallet can sometimes help.

KT - tried it, insolent thing flashed up warning that it would dial computer line and report me! Have tried adding the wagging finger to the hard stare but it just kind of hunched its shoulders and flashed up 'like I'm really scared now.'

Guy - bought cleaner disc thing and inserted it and the computer tells me there is no disc in there so it won't play it and clean itself!!!!!!! grrrrrr!!
bashing keys really hard now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sounds to me like you have one of two things going on...

1. One of the connectors have managed to shake loose, which does happen at times, especially if one of the wires is near one of the cooling fans.

2. You may have some sort of a hardware conflict. Can you put in a data type CD and have it work or is it just music CDs that won't play? If your data ones will work, then you probably need to reload the software for your sound card (I know, sounds odd!) If the data one won't play, check your Windows Hardware manager (found in the control panel) and see if there's an error in there. You may need to reload the drivers for the CD-ROM if you have them or can find them online.

Barring that, your CD-ROM is probably hosed and will need to be replaced. Unfortunately these things do go bad at times. It sucks.

Did you try the power down completely, leave it off for 10 minutes, chant the "go away bad ju-ju" chant then turn it back on? It may have over heated and something could have warped. One never knows!

I fear this is stating the obvious, but....

Holly, when you say "went and made a cup of coffee so that the computer fairy could sort it out while I wasn't looking" - I'm assuming you did remember to remove the cup of coffee from the coffee-holder and replace it with a CD before sliding it back into place?

:)

(I'm joking, obviously - actually what AAC says rings true, except to say that if the connectors had shook loose the PC probably wouldn't recognise that it even had a CD ROM drive after rebooting - when you click on "My Computer" is it showing in the list of available drives? For example, drive D?)

depends on which wire shook loose...if it's the one that goes to the sound card, it would still be recognized. And if it's the one that goes to the motherboard, it may just be loose on one or two of the pins but would still be recognized (personal experience!! Took forever to figure it out!) Once I unplugged it from the cable and plugged it back in, it worked fine!

Ptolemy - what can I say, you need a slap! but at least you made me laff.
Actually having completely forgotten about "my computer" til late last night I found I can play the CDs from there.

AAC - many thanks for all the thoughts and suggestions, I'm very impressed.
and all of what you said sounded logical captain. With the CDs playing normally through the "my computer" route I guess this means the problem is with the windows media player that normally launches them automatically but now just sulks. I shall persevere.

Thanks very much both. I have Tracy Chapman playing now, music to my ears!