Ask A Geek

Q: I have a DELL OptiPlex 320 with an AIT chipset. About a year ago I was trying to upgrade my graphics card and tried several ATI, NVIDIA cards and none of them would work in my system. After taking it to several computer shops, I found a guy that got a Sapphire X300SE to work. Now I am wanting to upgrade to a better card and curious if any ATI card will now work in my system or will I have to do something different other than installing it?

Q: I have a blue screen w/error message computer shut down to save information, unbootable, new hardware installed 0X000000ED. I cannot start in safemode goes back to blue screen and does not reboot w/ XP installation disk.

Q: When I bought an iPod it already had music on it. I hooked it up to my computer it deleted everything. Will it do that every time I hook it up to a new computer?

Q: I just bought an IBM ThinkPad on craigslist and it’s suppose to have WiFi but I think the guy deleted it. How do I recover it? I don’t have any restore discs or any discs for it.

Q: Would a 2GB HP laptop be good enough for running games like RuneScape?

Q: I need to recover deleted emails from today on my aim account. It was hacked and everything is gone. What do I do?

Q: Using Windows XP, Windows movie maker version 5.1 does not recognize my Canon ZR200 mini dv camcorder using USB to transfer dv tape to the computer. The capture from video device does not work either in Movie Maker. Any suggestions other than using fire wire. I have purchased a cable but have no port for this option.

Q: What is the best inexpensive laptop?

Q: When I am using the Internet or I am on xbox live I get kicked off when my phone rings or I try to make a call. What is the problem and how can I fix it?

Q: Full-size keyboard is a keyboard that includes the number pad, all keys and qwerty layout (to my understanding) What do you call a keyboard that is smaller than a normal keyboard? (Example – a notebook keyboard)

I had a customer inform me that a notebook keyboard is not a full sized keyboard even if it includes everything. To my understanding a full-sized keyboard is a keyboard that can be any size as long as it includes everything. I understand that he means its smaller in size comparison.

Is there another term? Or is this term really this vague?