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Vol. 6, No. 46
11-9-06
1 Easy upgrades III
2 Now watch this drive
3 Trouble in the orchard, Vista news, PS3 seen in the wild, clipper for RFID
4 Compress and back up DVDs
5 Printer not listed in Windows
So far we’ve covered RAM and video cards. This week we’ll do an upgrade to or addition of a DVD burner before we get complicated.
A DVD burner will also burn CDs so if you currently just have a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM then a DVD-RW is an excellent addition, and CD/DVD drives are easier than RAM with the fact that they are standard. Pretty much any drive will work in any PC.
Most modern DVD-RW drives will burn both + and – media, dual layer DVDs and CDs, plus the RW versions of all disks. Some will burn the oddball DVD-RAM disks and many have a feature called Lightscribe, which burns graphics to the cover sides of specially coated media.
Before you rush out to buy a drive you need to check a couple of things. Make sure you have an empty 5¼” drive bay if you’re adding a drive and check the IDE cable (the wide flat gray cable that hooks to the existing drive) to see if it has a free connector. Most IDE cable have three connectors, one to the motherboard and two for drives, but some computer manufacturers go for the two cent savings and only offer one drive connector. Also verify that you have an available power connector. Check the existing drive for a white hard plastic connector nearest the left side of the case.
Once you have the information you need head off to the nearest computer shop or big-box store and go shopping. Many brands are available but I’m partial to Lite-On drives. They’re relatively inexpensive, have low failure rats and include a good software bundle of Nero and PowerDVD.
Make sure the drive is the correct color (beige or black) to match your PC case, and verify your processor and memory meet the minimum requirements to support it. Go ahead and pick up an IDE cable and power splitter if you need them, they’re both cheap.
Retail boxed drives have everything you need to mount the drive, including screws and an audio cable in case you still run 98.
Remove both side panels from your PC (if both actually come off) and determine how the drives are mounted. Most screw in place from either side but some have screwless mounts that use plastic clips to lock in place. If needed pull out the existing drive to see how the mounting works if it isn’t obvious. If you’re replacing a drive you’ll do this anyway, naturally.
Now remove the plastic cover panel on the faceplate (if needed) and remove any metal panels behind it. Lastly, check the jumper settings for the existing drive or the drive you are replacing. The jumper makes the drive Master, Slave or Cable Select. The jumper block is to the left of the IDE connector on the back of the drive and looks like :::: or ::: . The two vertical pins to the right, closest to the IDE port, are Master. Next over are Slave and the third is Cable Select.
If you’re replacing a drive just match the old setting. If you’re adding a drive you may need to pull the IDE cable from the existing drive to see the setting and jumper the new one appropriately. You can have either one Master and one Slave or two Cable Select drives per cable.
Slide the drive in and secure it, connect the cables and fire up the PC. Leave the side panels off until you make sure the new drive is recognized, and then you can put the case back together. Over the years I’ve learned never to button things up first because I may have to reseat a cable or change a jumper.
Once in Windows load the burning and DVD playback software and you’re in business!
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Shipments of
Apple Computer's new 17-inch MacBook Pro notebooks are
off to a rocky start
this month, with customers reporting that the
company has been unable to make
good on delivery times initially
quoted with their orders:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2217
Microsoft
Corp's Windows Vista, the software giant's first major
upgrade of its
operating system in five years, is complete and will be
available to retail
customers on January 30 a senior executive said
on Wednesday:
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411419/885317
Real
live human beings have touched a Playstation 3; they have even
played games
on one. Can the apocalypse be far behind?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/web/display/20061107091318.html
Trying
to balance the cost-saving benefits of RFID with consumers'
privacy concerns,
IBM's Watson Research Center has developed a
technology dubbed Clipped
Tag:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127792-c,privacy/article.html
Copy
us on the good stuff---with the RFID tag disabled, of course. ;-)
Matthew
Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
DVDs are useful for backing
up your hard drive, but what backs up your DVDs? Put your DVD burner to good use
with DVD Shrink, which lets you back up the data on your DVD. DVD Shrink burns
your backup file to your hard drive. If you have the latest version of Nero's
burning software, DVD Shrink will work with it to let you burn a backup DVD as
well.
If you're resourceful, you
might even find other uses for this program. It's free here: http://tinyurl.com/y65ymd.
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have an EMachine T1840 with Windows
XP-Home Version 2002 and an HP all-in-one printer. I recently had to reinstall
the printer software.
It loaded successfully as I can find it and open it
under Programs.
However, from the drop down print menu in Word or Excel, it
does not
appear. Nor can I find it under the "Find Printer" tab on
either
drop-down menu. The software is also not in the Printers/Fax folder
on
the Control Panel. Any suggestions on how to fix this
problem?
A: If the printer is connected to a USB
port that may be the problem.
Disconnect the printer, uninstall all the
software related to it and
reboot the PC. Reinstall the software and if
prompted connect the
printer. If not leave it disconnected, finish the
install and follow
any instructions. If prompted to reboot when
finished do so and hook
the printer up during the boot process. If not,
shut down, connect
the printer and boot normally. If Windows asks about
automatically
loading drivers just allow that.
That should
get things back to normal.
If the printer
is connected to a parallel port you have an
entirely different problem and
we'll have to troubleshoot that.
Hope that helps
and keep me posted...
Kevin Mefford
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