Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 November 21

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[edit] November 21

[edit] Random Japanese Characters Appearing

Whenever I'm on certain sites (especially those in the French language) instead of many letters with diatrics, or those followed by an apostrophe, I see a Japanese character instead. Does anyone know how to stop this? --Bearbear 18:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you have the encoding set for Japanese. If you select automatic encoding (how to do it depends on the browser), I guess it will be fixed. –mysid☎ 19:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
If it's IE, it sadly will not. The cause for the problem is the lack of a specification to indicate which character set will be used. If nothing is specified, the browser will guess based on the content - and in my experience, if you have installed the Japanese IME (for example by installing support for East Asian languages from the Control Panel), it may think the page is in Shift-JIS, which will cause this problem to appear.
It can be worked around for a particular page by changing the encoding manually, but this only lasts until you reload.
The proper way of doing things would be to tell the website administrator to insert the following in the <HEAD>-section of each page:
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
If that is present (or the equivalent data is in the HTTP header), the browser will respect this and use the proper encoding.
Apart from doing that or optionally removing the IME again, I'm afraid the only fix I know of is to use a different browser. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 23:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I see :(. I had a look to find out how to get rid of the support, but couldn't find out how. Can anyone help? --Bearbear 16:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Start > Settings > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages (Tab) > There, unselect "Install files for Asian Languages" and click on Details > select & remove the specific language. > Apply & OK. Hope it works. Seejyb 00:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I did it a little differently once I got to the end (it said I had no support for Asian languages) by changing the language bar, but I think it might have worked. --Bearbear 17:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wait for an Apple?

I'm thinking about buying a new iMac G5. If I decided to wait, what new features and improvements can I expect, and how long would I have to wait. Many thanks! --86.139.127.29 20:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Apple Computer decided to switch all its computers over to Intel processors, so it is futile to wait for a new and improved iMac with a G5 CPU. Given the attachment some Mac users have to their PowerPC machines (despite the capabilities of the new machines), used machines may continue to sell for a relatively high price. If you really need a G5 machine, which generally means running an application that is heavily dependent on AltiVec, don't wait. --KSmrqT 06:16, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Are keyloggers illegal?

If you, for example, bought a computer and your wife/girlfriend or whoever installed a keylogger on it, would this be illegal?

I assume it would be if you bought the computer yourself, but what if it was a joint purchase?

What country, state, province, city... are you referring to? In general, keyloggers are not illegal. There are illegal ways to use a keylogger. --Kainaw (talk) 20:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Key loggers don't kill people, people kill people. ;) Installing a key logger on someone else's system and obtaining information without their knowledge is definitely against the law in most countries, unless you are their legal guardian. AnyIf you wanted even more specific you would have to consult local law. Vespine 23:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows Explorer weirdness

When I'm trying to type a new address in the address bar of a Windows Explorer window, for example C:\Program Files\etc...., every three or four seconds the address gets reset to what it was before I started typing. It's as if my Esc key was being automatically pressed. I also have a friend with this issue, and I have no idea what could be causing it. The problem does not exist in Internet Explorer or anywhere else, just the address bar of Explorer. — Jonathan Kovaciny (talk|contribs) 21:44, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I've seen this in browsers before, but not in the File Manager ("Windows Explorer", to use the silly Microsoft name). StuRat 06:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bios boot up problem

i posted before about it taking 10 mins to do pre post check and i thought it was fixed but it came back. and when i tried to reflash my drive its all gone wrong. it told me the version i had was the wrong one, did i want to continue i press N, it didnt recongise the keystroke or any other for that matter so i restarted my pc. now all i get is Award bootblock v 1.0, bios rom checksum error, keyboard not detected or no keyboard detected, detecting floppy drive A media, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER, i'm afraid to say i was to confident of my skills and now i've cocked up big time. i have no systems disks on floppys, now i have found one website http://fourms.windrivers.com/archive/index.php/t-64279 which describes my situtation excatly however the answer to how to fix it goes a little over my head on what to do any help would be very much appreciated, otherwise i have a very large doorstop--137.205.8.2 22:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like you've got a bad BIOS. That domain doesn't resolve for me so I don't know what the link says, but I'd say send it back to the manufacturer for repair --frothT C 23:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
That link doesn't work for me, either. StuRat 06:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
That link should be http://forums.windrivers.com/archive/index.php/t-64279. I looked at the page, and the answer relates to making a bootable floppy, containing an autoexec.bat file (containing the instructions that the last post gives), as well as a copy of the flashing program and the bios image file. For the last two you would have to know what motherboard you have, and from that what bios you need. So your first job would be to find out what make and model your mb is, then get hold of a copy of the most recent bios flash image file (xxxxxxxxx.bin) and a copy of the flashing program (e.g. awdflash.exe). Then you need a floppy disk that can be formatted to be bootable. How you go about making up the disk depends on what operating system you are using. Once you have collected the information and "parts", let us know the details (OS and file names), and one should be able to work out something. Seejyb 14:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
yah reflash worked little took abit of altering the new bios for windows to work though and for some reason getting msg "IDE channel 1 no 80 Conductor cable" when i didnt even touch the ide things, and now it takes windows ages to load as well, as well as pre post--Colsmeghead 20:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

(know sigs changed but same person diff computers)

The 80 conductor cable error probably means that you have configured bios for ultra-ATA or ultra-DMA, and that requires a specific 80-conductor cable for your CD/HD (which you do not appear to have installed). Check DMA/ATA seting in BIOS Seejyb 21:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
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