pc help please!

[jockdee]

hey people, got a pc prob here. some of the websites i view, including this one, the text is all blurred. i can assure you i've not been drinking and that my eyesight is perfect! help me please before pc goes out the window!

[The Mullet of G]

hmm try setting your desktop resolution to 1024x768 or higher, and turn up your refresh rate as high as you can while your at it, it could also be a graphics card issue, try looking in your settings for anything mentioning font smoothing etc and play about with these settings too see if it helps, also if your using XP goto your control panel and goto system then click the "advanced" tab then on the top option "performance" click settings scroll down the list here if your running a reasonable PC 1ghz upwards with a reasonable swedge of ram then all these boxes should be checked, if they are try unchecking the "smooth onscreen fonts" option and see if that helps, if all else fails kick your monitor and PC, it may not sort the problem out but you'll feel all the better for it. :p

[screwedlilbunny]

how'd yew know all that stuff to do mullet?

[Sunners]

I thinks G should be the Computing Mod :p

[The Mullet of G]

lol basically I was a destructive child, I was never happy with my toys so I always took them apart to see how they worked and tried to make them better, now that I'm older I've lost the destructive streak but I've kept my wanting to know how everything works tendencey, so from the day I bought my first PC a few years ago a rather chunky laptop to be precise to the present day I've spent a fair amount of time figuring out how the things work, after you've had to try and sort thousands and thousands of tedious PC probs across several Windows platforms you start to get the jist of how it all works, and as to being the Computing Mod I wouldn't say no ;) , either way I'm just happy to be able to help people out with there PC probs as I've been there bought the T shirt and worn the puzled lost expression that comes hand in hand with the most tedious of PC probs, and no point knowing about something if you can't apply your knowledge to help others. :)

[TURBODIESEL]

greetings mr 'mullet of g' my fellow countryman,
perhaps u would be so kind as to help me with an unresolved pc issue........

when im not online, my pc constantly pops up the box/window prompting me to connect to the internet, for example when im in the middle of typing some text or creating a picture in psp or sumthing.
it seems to have a mind of its own!!!

i think it might be planning something?, in fact im sure i heard it trying to communicte with the microwave in the middle of the night! im gonna jam the broom under my bedroom door handle tonight:( :( :(

lol seriously though m8, u got any idea why its doing this?
thanks

TD.

[The Mullet of G]

will do my best, been bout 2 years since I was on dial up but I've had the same problem when I was, ok first thing to do is click on the "tools" tab at the top of the page and goto "internet options" you can also access this through the control panel, ok from here goto connections in here check that its not set to "dial whenever a network connection is not present" it should be set to "dial my default connection" also above that there should be a box detailing all the connections available, really the only connections you should see in here are your internet service provider and any network components you may have or bluetooth etc, if there is any suspicious dialup programs or anything you can't verify post the name of it here as there is every chance it could be a dodgey dialup program that a lot of sites seem to try and fob onto you, a lot of them are quite obtrusive and confusing and its very easy to install one of them unwittingly, ok once thats done make sure you haven't got kazaa or any other programs running in the background that require a net connection as a lot of programs like kazaa will try to connect to the net if they are not connected and they are running, also msn messenger has been known to try and sneakily connect to the net try exiting messenger if your not online, and last but certainly not least random conection attempts are also often caused by virus's and trojans so it may be worth installing anti virus software and a firewall to see if this is the case, also if you are running a firewall it will tell you which program is causing your PC to dial out and from here you can choose to block it if its a rogue bit of software etc be carefull what you block though, I'd highly recommend Norton Internet security which has both firewall and antivirus protection, it can be obtained from kazaa it'll take a couple of hours or so to download it on 56k but its more than worth it as trojans and virus's are rife these days :)

[TURBODIESEL]

thanks m8 for the detailed reply :)
i checked the "internet options" and thats all ok.
the thing that caught my attention in ur reply is:


also msn messenger has been known to try and sneakily connect to the net

as soon as my pc has booted, it opens up with msn messenger prompting me to sign in, i forget what my desktop looks like sometimes. how do i stop it doing this? its actually starting to do my head in LOL.

thanks again m8.

TD.

[Morph]

Open MSN messenger, click on tools, then options, then click on the general tab, and un-tick 'Run messenger when windows starts'. If there anything else that you don't want running on startup, or if that doesn't work, click on start, then on run, then type in msconfig and press enter. Click on the start up tab, and un-tick anything you don't want running on startup. Then click on OK. It usually requires a reboot, and will come up with a message saying that you are using the selective startup for trouble shooting when you have restarted, just click don't show this message again, and then on OK. This config is good for getting you pc to run faster, as you can stop a lot of things running in the background that you don't really ned that are just using up system rescouces. Be careful what you do stop running though, as some of it is needed by windows!

[The Mullet of G]

Well played Andy :)