Stop Error Messages

[HEPZIBAH]

Having tried to turn on my office pc this morning I got a blue screen Stop Error message. What I don't understand is that it is telling me that if it's the first time I've seen this screen I can open and continue (or words to that efffect) and/ or check the drive etc BUT I can't actually get beyond the blue page. No matter which key I press I can go no further. I had hoped that this may just be a 'I'm not feeling well' message but am now wondering if this the Blue Screen of Death?

[Horus]

Difficult to say without knowing more Hepzi
What operating system is it running on?
Have you recently installed any other devices?
Have you recently installed any updates?
Have you just tried re-booting the PC?
Do you know how to start your PC in 'Safe Mode'?
If so, have you tried doing that?
Can you hear any sequence of 'beeps' when it tries to start up?
Are you hearing any unusual noise from your PC?

In short this can mean sudden death, but also it may be fixable, check all or some of the above first.

[HEPZIBAH]

Difficult to say without knowing more Hepzi

What operating system is it running on? Still on XP so no support.
Have you recently installed any other devices? No.
Have you recently installed any updates? No, only the normal update stuff that happens automatically.
Have you just tried re-booting the PC? Yes, a few times.
Do you know how to start your PC in 'Safe Mode'? I have tried that from the option menu, after Start in Normal Mode' .
If so, have you tried doing that? " " "
Can you hear any sequence of 'beeps' when it tries to start up? For a few days it's beeped and alerted me a battery slow thing - Press F1 and all started up well.
Are you hearing any unusual noise from your PC? No clonking or churning or other disturbing noises.

In short this can mean sudden death, but also it may be fixable, check all or some of the above first.

Thanks.

[carrie]

Good luck Hepzibah

[HEPZIBAH]

The Good News: A new computer tower arrived today.
The Bad News: I haven't got a clue what I'm doing with it.

I've managed to the wires into the right sockets (I think), although I've still not worked out how to get it to connect to our internet. That will have to be tomorrows project.
What ever happened to operation manuals? The scrappy bit of paper barely relates to the product (imo).

The Sad News: It doesn't have a CD/DVD slot.

[Horus]

The Sad News: It doesn't have a CD/DVD slot.

Like most things they slowly become obsolete, memory sticks and all that hold more data, although you could always buy a cheapo external USB plug-in CD/DVD player like this one for about £12
https://www.amazon.co.uk/External-Netbo ... cd+players

[HEPZIBAH]

Nah! I don't want to save stuff! I want to watch movies and listen to music.

[Horus]

But that is why I suggested the external USB powered drive, it will let you play CD's or watch DVD's
But to be honest nowadays I put hundreds of MP3's onto a USB stick and it does the same thing and without all the bulkiness of CD's

[HEPZIBAH]

Ohh!!! Maybe one day I'll catch up with all these things and understand what is going on. Then again, maybe not!

[Dusak]

While we are on the subject, do they make a contraption that you can plug in, connect an external hard drive to that has a TV out/in connection so you can watch your downloads without having to use the computer?

[carrie]

Another question, I download my CD's on to my computer, I know I can download from my computer onto a memory stick, but how could I download onto memory stick if I have no CD drive on the computer to put the music on in the first place? Hope you understand what I'm on about.

[Horus]

@ Dusak, you would need a ‘Smart’ TV or at least one that had a USB socket and you would download your film/s to a USB stick and then plug it into your TV to watch it. The problem is that the USB stick needs to be ‘formatted’ to the same one as your TV, this is usually the FAT 32 or EX FAT format, FAT standing for File Allocation Table, but this is dependent upon your TV and you will have to check your TV manual to find this out. The biggest draw back is that FAT 32 will only read files up to 4 GB, but whichever formatting type you finish up using, all of the movies must have been saved on your PC in a type that can be recognised by the TV set such as MPEG2 and MPEG4 which are most common, but some other types may work.

With the above TV USB socket available you could also plug in a normal PC hard drive (portable) and so long as it is formatted as above it should still work the same way.

Also if your TV set and your PC both have an HDMI socket, then I assume that you are aware that if you plug a lead between the two devices that you can easily watch a film running from your PC on the larger TV screen?

@ Carrie, if I understand your question it is “I do have a CD drive and I use it to put my music onto my PC, then I transfer these files onto a memory stick, but if I did not have a CD drive how else could I do it?”
The short answer would be that you can’t and you would need to obtain the music file from another source on the internet, maybe by using I-tunes or similar. There are devices that you can buy that will transfer CD’s and Vinyl records onto your PC, but they only have that one purpose.

Something you should remember is how the files are saved and in this case “size is important”.
CD music is usually recorded in a format called .WAV files and they are quite large and that is why you only get around 20 songs maximum on a CD disk. The same would apply if you copied these onto a ‘memory stick’ it would fill up very quickly. The best method of storing your music is by using MP3 files as these are very small in size so you can fit many, many more onto either a CD/DVD disk or a USB memory stick, but it does require the software to make the change from one file format to the other and any CD player needs to be able to play MP3’s as not all of them can.

Hope this helps

[carrie]

Thank you