Home » The PARIS Forums » PARIS: Main » OT: Help! Calling all computer whizzes . . .
| OT: Help! Calling all computer whizzes . . . [message #103394] |
Tue, 12 May 2009 06:28  |
Sarahtonin
Messages: 16
Registered: April 2009
Location: United States
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As many of you know, when I'm not a big rock star, I work full time as an RN. I've been doing some research on bacteriophage viruses as natural antibiotics, and putting together a Powerpoint to share with my peers.
The presentation contains a number of video clips, and last fall I decided things might run a little smoother if I replaced my ancient Diamond Viper graphics card with a new one, so I did (Nvidia GeForce 7600), and the movie clips actually got worse, kind of twitchy and stuttery.
I replaced the monitor. I beefed the RAM up to 1.5 GB. No change in the movie clip performance.
At the suggestion of a programmer friend, I recently reformatted and reinstalled XP, which all went without a hitch, except now the movie clip problem has gone from bad to crazy weird worse:
First of all, the clips are no longer in color, though there's a hint of color, as though the saturation is turned way down. But worse of all, when Powerpoint gets to a movie clip one of two things happens: I get the "Windows had encountered a problem, etc . . . " and shuts the program down, or worst of all, the movie clip starts to play and the whole computer shuts off and reboots! What the . . . !? This also happens, by the way, playing the clips in Windows Media Player.
Everything else is running just fine. The entire system has been scanned for viruses, etc., and come up clean.
Computer is AMD Athlon XP 1700+, 1.47 GHz. running XP Professional, v.2002, Service Pack 3, if that's of any help.
This has nothing to do with PARIS or music, of course. Well, except that as soon as I solve this annoying issue, I can get back to focusing on the long awaited, eagerly anticipated second Sarahtonin CD. 
Maybe I just need a new computer?
Thanks in advance,
Sarah
God is asleep, and we are his nightmare
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| Re: OT: Help! Calling all computer whizzes . . . [message #103395 is a reply to message #103394] |
Tue, 12 May 2009 08:46  |
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I'm not a PC wiz (I was a Mac wiz once), but my first instinct is that you have a corrupted video segment - can you swap out the clip(s) in your presentation and let us know what happens?
Can you open the video clip in a video conversion program and render it to a different format, re-save it and re-import it?
[Interesting that you're working on phages; I just finished reading Greg Bear's great sci-fi books "Darwin's Radio" and "Darwin's Children", which touch on phage therapy in the mountains of Georgia as "plot thickeners" - dunno if you like sci-fi but this is amongst the "best of breed", very thought provoking.]
"... being bitter is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die..." - anon
[Updated on: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:52] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: OT: Help! Calling all computer whizzes . . . [message #103399 is a reply to message #103395] |
Thu, 14 May 2009 06:02 |
Sarahtonin
Messages: 16
Registered: April 2009
Location: United States
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Junior Member |
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I had tried many different movie clips, all with the same result, in Powerpoint and Media Player.
I had tried different formats as well, except for .avi. Amazingly, .avi worked in the Powerpoint, repeatedly and in full color. So I will convert the other clips to .avi and hope for the best.
There is still some weird generalized video problem, though, because the same .avi file loses it's color information in Media Player, as does every other video I play there. I even played an old movie clip I've played for years without problem and the computer rebooted right in the middle of it. Weird.
Re: Greg Bear stories . . . when you say "mountains of Georgia," are you talking about the USA, or the former USSR? Because the latter contains the oldest continuous researchers in phage therapy, the Eliava Institute. http://www.eliava-ibmv.caucasus.net/ They've been at it since the early '20s. and curing infections with success rates in the 80-90% range long before antibiotics were discovered.
Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about an MD using phages to cure plague, Arrowsmith, in 1925 or so, which won him a (refused)Pulitzer, and was made into an Acadamy Award nominated film in the early '30s.
So this is not new stuff. It was actually discovered over a hundred years ago, but our pharmaceutical establishment is too greedy and backward to pay it any mind, even though it may be our only hope for stopping epidemics of resistant bacteria.
Oops . . . now I'm REEAALY off topic. That'll teach ya. 
S
God is asleep, and we are his nightmare
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| Re: OT: Help! Calling all computer whizzes . . . [message #103401 is a reply to message #103400] |
Fri, 15 May 2009 12:14 |
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One more troubleshooting step that's a bit more... trouble... is - do you have another video card kicking about, no matter how antiquated, that you could swap in and test to see if the symptoms persist?
"... being bitter is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die..." - anon
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| Re: OT: Help! Calling all computer whizzes . . . [message #103414 is a reply to message #103399] |
Sat, 16 May 2009 22:20 |
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| Quote: | Re: Greg Bear stories . . . when you say "mountains of Georgia," are you talking about the USA, or the former USSR? Because the latter contains the oldest continuous researchers in phage therapy, the Eliava Institute. http://www.eliava-ibmv.caucasus.net/ They've been at it since the early '20s. and curing infections with success rates in the 80-90% range long before antibiotics were discovered.
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The nation of Georgia - Eliava is involved in the first part of the book; Bear makes a lot of the same points you've made here. He's obviously done a lot of research.
| Quote: | Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about an MD using phages to cure plague, Arrowsmith, in 1925 or so, which won him a (refused)Pulitzer, and was made into an Acadamy Award nominated film in the early '30s.
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I just found a bit of "Arrowsmith" online and got hooked reading it - it's great, I'm going to see if I can find it next trip to the bookstore.
| Quote: | So this is not new stuff. It was actually discovered over a hundred years ago, but our pharmaceutical establishment is too greedy and backward to pay it any mind, even though it may be our only hope for stopping epidemics of resistant bacteria.
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It's got my curiosity piqued.
| Quote: | Oops . . . now I'm REEAALY off topic. That'll teach ya.
S
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All work and no play makes Jack a dull forum
"... being bitter is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die..." - anon
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