Computer Geeks Unite! And farging help me!

[Dillen]

Yeah, that's not what I mean (on a side note, it is the dumbest invention ever). The PC doesn't even recognize that the touchpad exists, and I can't find out why/how to get it back. That's the issue.

[General_Failure]

System restore might do it, but if it stopped working over a week ago you may not want to roll back that far. Maybe this will help? http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/sfc-scannow.htm

[Dillen]

Just tried restore point of 2 weeks ago, didn't work. Said a driver from the restore point could not be found, but it wasn't the driver I had removed and re-installed. Other points were less than a week old, so those wouldn't help. Beginning to think this is going to turn into a huge thing that's going to cost me a couple hundred bucks, unless I wipe it and start over. Even if I do, I bet it'll wind up being some hardware thing instead. I'll probably drop into some PC help places because this is going to be beyond what I can do...

[Sgt PSN]

Uncovered my 1st PC in my mom's attic the other day.  It's a Micron from 1997.  Obviously I have no use for it, so I'm going to get rid of it, but for shteins and giggles I decided to hook it up, make sure it works, and also make sure I didn't have any personal info on it.  Surprisingly this thing fired up quick.  Like really quick.  Played around with it for a few minutes and was satisfied.  Decided that I wanted to hook up to the web and realized it's only got phone lines on the back because dial up was the most common means of getting on the web back then. 

So, do they make adapters that convert a standard phone line into a cat5 so that I could connect to a modern modem?

Would I need to disable the internal modem?

Would this actually work?

Also (and this is a question that may be better suited for uber nerds like GF or Sus if he's lurking), is there any type of "collector market" for PC heads?  I have nearly everything that came with this computer.  All of the software, start up disks, back up disks, manuals, certs of authenticity......all that shtein.  I've still got the farging mouse pad.  What I don't have (or haven't found yet) is the original monitor and keyboard. 

Should I try to sell it on craigslist and/or ebay, or just drop it off at the Salvation Army? 

[General_Failure]

If you get rid of it, take the hard drive out and toss the drive in an industrial shredder. If you keep it, you just need to pick up an ethernet card. It should have a PCI slot or two inside, so you could pick one up for like fifteen bucks, but I have no idea if you can even get Windows 95 drivers for stuff now.

I have no idea if anyone on craigslist would want it, but pickupplease will probably take it. I'm assuming they're not some zesty scam thing.

[Susquehanna Birder]

Yeah, it's pretty much trash. I have a couple like that to go out for recycling (we can no longer leave such things out at the curb). Just take out the hard drive, run a drill through it, and take it to staples for disposal.

[Sgt PSN]

Here's another question.  I also found an old desktop pc from my mom's old job.  It ran Windows 98 and was part of a network, so it had a log on and everything (don't ask why she has it).  I reformatted it and wiped the OS so that we could trash it.  My mom (because she's old and weird) wanted to see if Windows XP could be loaded since she has the install disk.  So I installed it and it worked just fine.  And that got me to thinking......

I have a laptop that I bought back in 08 or 09 and it runs Vista.  We all know that Vista sucks but XP was (still is, imo) a pretty good OS.  So I'm wondering if I could/should remove Vista from my laptop and install XP instead.  I rarely even use the laptop anymore now that I've switched to Mac, but since it works just fine I never saw the point in getting rid of it.  If nothing else, it's good to have a functioning laptop for when my kids visit and on the rare occasion that I would need/want to use that laptop, I'd much rather have XP than Vista. 

Any potential problems I should look for? 

[PhillyPhanInDC]

If it ran shteinball vista, it will run shteinball xp

[Sgt PSN]

Could you elaborate?  My understanding with Vista is that it's a big OS and takes up a lot of space which kind of slows it down. XP is smaller and theoretically should run smoother, no? 

Even if performance is the same, I simply like XP better than Vista. Other than having to reinstall existing software like Office and Chrome, i shouldn't have any problems, should I? 

[SD]

anyone buy a laptop/tablet combo? Guy at work just bought one and it's pretty bad ass. My laptop is 3 years old and it's starting to wear down.

[Sgt PSN]

Someone actually responded to my ad on craigslist for that old Micron PC, came and looked at it this morning and is very interested in it but wants to know if it can access the internet via DSL.  I've got DSL so I unplugged the phone line from my modem and connected to the PC but the internal modem is for dial up and it wouldn't connect, and the PC doesn't have a cat5 port to plug directly into the DSL modem.  Would a cat5 to phone line adapter work?  I'd run the cat5 from the dsl modem to the converter and then phone line from the converter to the PC.  Dude is ready to give me $100 for this farging thing, but only if he can get online with it. 

Any suggestions? 

[General_Failure]

Holy shtein, people still use DSL?

[Sgt PSN]

Out here you can't get cable unless you live in town.  But you can make fun of that later.  How do you connect a PC with no cat5 port to a DSL modem? 

[Zanshin]

What about a simple router and a wifi card? Cheap.

[Diomedes]

we're on DSL getting better than cable speed because we're right next to the hub

or something like that.