Random Banter Thread

[Kalamos]

* Wanders by *

He! I can't steal these guys' limelight.
I'll have to ask full-mods to rename this thread.

...

Again.

😉

* Wanders off *

 

[Sockstickler]

Hey, nice skull! Lose your helmet? 😛

 

[LonelyKimiko]

Like the new Avatar 😎 .

 

[BigNorm]

Hey, nice skull! Lose your helmet? 😛

the skull looks fat.... eat too many twinkies?

 

[Kalamos]

* Appear out of shadows *

My avatar... ah, yes.
A nifty joke of old.
That's why sometimes users refer to me as the undead drawer.

I should really tell, someday.

...

Oh, btw, I remember switching XP to the wrong res, and making it perm.
Had to fiddle with stuff, but managed to reset it without resorting to format...

 

[LonelyKimiko]

I was young and foolish. Now I know you can fiddle about in safe mode 🙂 .

 

[Sockstickler]

Oh yes, never underestimate the power of safe mode. Of course, there are some powers that even fiddling around in safe mode won't cure. These can only be resolved by a full reformatting of the hard drive. I had to do that once. I ended up losing all of my downloaded music. I'm slowly working on getting my collection back because of it.

 

[BigNorm]

having to reset it for 2 reasons, both seemingly to do with my video card:

A. in high detail games, like half-life 2, it just freezes and a ear piercing screeching erupts and i have to restart it.

B. if the computer has been on for a little while, the graphics get all screwey, like this... this is a screenshot from battlefield 2.

 

[LonelyKimiko]

RAM >.< . You have so much random stuff running in the background that has accumulated, same as me. Possibly the biggest annoyance you get on windows.

 

[BigNorm]

so it's with the RAM... interesting, even have 2 gigs of virtual memory to help, and over 1 gig of RAM... so what should i do?

 

[Sockstickler]

Well, you could hit control-alt-delete and open up your task manager, then check for any programs or processes that are using up a lot of RAM, and if they're nothing really important, go ahead and close them down. There was a time I had to do that a lot, because I did have a lot of random background stuff going.

 

[LonelyKimiko]

Just format. The problem is with all the web browsing, and installing stuff, you basically end up with a huge list of programs that are running in the background after a while, all taking up space. Here is my basic definition :

----------------------------------------------------------------------- (RAM)
|--------------------|---------|--------------|
(operating system) (random other programs)

When you run things, they get loaded into the ram, like above. but you only have a finite amount of RAM available. Every program you run needs RAM space to work, so the more you run, the more you need. When the RAM gets filled to the top, and if windows can not sort it out, because its doing something like sorting out all the other programs, the computer crashes...

In the case of your game, the .exe file is running several little programs to get the whole effect, and one possible reason for your graphics screw up is that the video section is not being allocated enough ram space by the OS.

Basic fix, you format the computer, so you have none of these other programs installed, start from scratch, and be careful what popups you click.

And if anyone actually reads this from top to bottom, they have a lot of patience... 😛 .

 

[Sockstickler]

*Reads that post from top to bottom* That was your "basic" definition? What, may I ask, would be the advanced definition?

 

[BigNorm]

Well, you could hit control-alt-delete and open up your task manager, then check for any programs or processes that are using up a lot of RAM, and if they're nothing really important, go ahead and close them down. There was a time I had to do that a lot, because I did have a lot of random background stuff going.

holy hell, your right! i currently have 51k physical memory available and 42k system cache. wonder what programs i can stop... i have like 50 processes going on now, from my task manager menu...

 

[LonelyKimiko]

*Reads that post from top to bottom* That was your "basic" definition? What, may I ask, would be the advanced definition?

I could explain it in terms of the binary coding, with the different sizes of memory like bits and bits, and then go on to explain how it interacts with the rest of the system. Basically the whole "how a computer works" tutorial 😛 .

 

[Sockstickler]

That's your thing. I don't know all of the programs in your computer, so I couldn't tell you what to shut down, but I will say anything that looks like it's using the big numbers is a possible suspect.

 

[Kalamos]

It's good to know Kim can handle them safely. 🙂

* Wanders away *

 

[Sockstickler]

I could explain it in terms of the binary coding, with the different sizes of memory like bits and bits, and then go on to explain how it interacts with the rest of the system. Basically the whole "how a computer works" tutorial 😛 .

Hmmm, coming from you, that could actually be pretty interesting 🙂

 

[LonelyKimiko]

hehe 😛 .

 

[Sockstickler]

And to come back to what we were talking about in the other thread, Clone Troopers fire blue shots out of their rifles, correct?

 

[LonelyKimiko]

Yup, clone trooper rifles shoot blue, stormtrooper rifles shoot red...

 

[Sockstickler]

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't blue usually attributed to stun bolts and ion cannons?

 

[LonelyKimiko]

Ion cannons yes, but the stun bolts are little circles if I remember rightly...

 

[Sockstickler]

Ok, now what would happen if a human, or say, a Twi'lek, were hit with a handheld ion cannon? (Yes, I do have a point to make somewhere along this testimony 😎 )

 

[LonelyKimiko]

You sure you want me to answer that, cause I'll go all scientific 😛 .