Ask A Geek

Q: SR1503wm Compaq Presario. OS is Ubuntu 10.04. upgraded to 750 meg. Have two small 40-gig HDs. Computer runs okay with ANTI-X, a simple boot-from-CD unix OS. But with Ubuntu I have a problem. At random times, usually once an hour or so, the screen goes black, hard drive light shows no action, and I can find nothing to work, except power-off. Reboot is fast, and offers recovery on everything, so I can live with it, but don’t want to.

Q: My computer was working fine when I decided to shut it down and give it some rest (as it had been ‘on’ for weeks). But after I switched it back on, I could see the booting process but after 1 second, the screen disappeared and the light on the monitor turned from green to ample. When I switch the monitor off and on again, same thing happens – monitor light turns green (and can see windows being loaded) and after 1 second the screen disappears and the monitor light turns ample. There is no display of ‘standyby mode’ or anything like that, just blank.

I’ve noticed same thing happens when the computer is switched off. When the computer is off, I turn on the monitor and can see the display ‘power save mode’ for 1 second and then its gone and light is turned from green to ample. When I disconnect the VGA cord from the graphics card connected to the monitor, I get the ‘no signal data’ displayed on the screen and that does not disappear. However as soon as I reconnect the VGA Cord into the graphics card, the ‘power save mode’ appears for a second and then is gone.

The monitor works fine on other computer. Is there a problem with the graphics card or the motherboard AGP card slot?

Q: I bought a laptop that is suppose to come with ATI HD 4250. In both dxdiag and catalyst, it just says ATI HD 4200 series for graphic card. Does this mean I got a 4200 instead of a 4250 or is it just being vague? If it is vague how can I find specifically which of the series I have?

Q: I have recently installed SWAT 3 on my Windows Vista laptop. I can install the game fine, but when I load the game, an error message comes up saying “DIRECT X ERROR DDERR_GENERIC”. I have absolutely no idea what this means or what to do about it. Please do not start talking about graphics cards etc. because I will have no clue of what you are saying. Help would be very much appreciated.

Q: I installed a new video card on my Dell Inspiron 531 and now I have no internet connection, no sound, and the computer no longer recognizes the CD-ROM. This means I cannot reinstall anything or try to install drivers. Any suggestions?

Q: I would like to buy a new computer that is better for gaming but can’t really afford the cost at the moment, but perhaps in the next year or so. I am hoping to improve PVP lag issues I have in an MMO. I think the bottleneck is mainly my video card.

My system is a Intel core 2 running Vista, 2.33 ghz 2 gig ram. My power supply is 300w. My current video card is an ATI Raedeon HD 2600. If I simply buy a better video card (and perhaps a power supply if necessary) will I see lag issues improve? Will I be forced to get another power supply?

I have FiOS isp, so its not the isp.

There are times when there are perhaps 20-40 players in a small area and I get 1 frame for 1-5 seconds. It’s very aggravating.

Any input on what i can buy on kind of a budget is appreciated. I would like to spend <$150 if possible since more money would be better spent on a whole new computer. I would like to just improve what I have for now, and get a new system in the not too distant future. Thank you.

Q: I am about to purchase an ASUS RADEON 5450,1G, graphic card for a gigabyte s series g31m-es2l motherboard with a Intel Pentium d processor 915 2.80 ghz 2gig of ram. Will I be able to play most games?

I am an old bloke who loves COD 4.

Q: What is a graphics card?

Q: I’m trying to sort out my (practically new) Dell studio laptop. There seems to be an issue with the video driver because the screen goes black and sometimes recovers, in which case the mouse pointer is HUGE or sometimes I have to restart the computer.

It’s a really annoying problem especially considering how much I paid and how new the laptop is! The other thing is, I really don’t want to send my computer away because I have so much stuff on it already! Can anyone help me?

Q: When I install or update my screen driver it start failing. I have Windows 7 and when the driver is installed my Windows aero and 3d is very high but not with driver that’s not updated to installed.