When using Adobe Premiere, or other movie making software, the computer often freezes and I must cold-boot (i.e. turn the computer off and then on) to restore operation. However, this results in the computer stopping at the ‘Checking NVRAM’ stage of the power-on self-test. In turn, this means I need to restart the computer again to get it to boot properly. The CMOS battery was replaced two months ago, but could it have gone flat again? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

My Compaq Presario V2000 Notebook running Windows XP has been having intermittent problems booting. Some days the computer will successfully boot into Windows, whereas other days the computer just hangs at the ‘Compaq’ screen when the computer is turned-on. There is a white Compaq logo in the centre, and in the bottom left corner there is ‘Press ESC to change boot order’ and underneath ‘Press F10 to enter SETUP, F12 to boot from LAN’. When the computer hangs I have tried all these options, but nothing works! Pressing ESC yields another screen with text and freezes. The text is: “Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1 Copyright 1985-2003…639K System RAM Passed, 255M Extended RAM Passed, etc’¦’. One day when the computer did boot properly I was able to press F10 and get into the BIOS setup screen, and I set the BIOS to its default settings but this did not resolve the problem. I have called Compaq tech support but the only solution they can offer is to reinstall Windows. Can you provide any assistance? (more…)

I would like to clarify some conceptual doubts that I have regarding multithreading. It would be appreciated if you could refer me to a multithreading tutorial, and a University level book that deals with the subject. It is important that either (or both) show programming examples, otherwise my doubts will most likely remain! (more…)

I recently acquired a SCSI flatbed scanner for my computer. The computer already has a SCSI DAT tape drive attached, so do I need to modify the IRQ numbers for each device (e.g. IRQ 1 for the scanner, IRQ 2 for the tape drive)? (more…)

As the computer starts, a message appears on screen saying ‘CMOS settings wrong. Press F2 to load default values and continue’. Pressing F2 allows the computer to continue to boot, and work normally. However, I would like to get rid of this message on startup. The computer is running Windows Me. (more…)