dbminter

Boy, have I got a story to tell. In 2001, I sent in one of Weird Al Yankovic's CD's to him to get his autograph on. Yes, he will do autograph requests. But, I never expected to get it back because shortly after I sent it, the anthrax mail attacks of 2001 happened. It was instructed to celebrities to throw out their current batches of fan mail for fear of anthrax. Then, after a year or 2 of never receiving the CD back, I just plain forgot about the whole situation. Then came yesterday. To my complete astonishment, I received my CD back with a personalized autograph! Now, on Weird Al's website, it said it may take a long time for him to get around to autograph requests. It sure did, but, 8 years later, I got my autographed CD!

Someone PM'ed me a while back recommending a replacement for my AV software. I forget who that was and I've deleted the message. I'd like to reply back to that person with some new information. If this sounds like you would you please PM me again and let know so I can reply back? Thanks!

Well, we can't assure anything. Given the many possibilities of what may be going on inside the drive or even things like if you computer is using the HD enough to cause time outs, which if it were the log would tell you. But, Verbatim DVD+R DL's are pretty much the best out there and what is recommended. I've used about a hundred of them and only had 1 go wrong. It was strange, it burned, it verified, but when I got around to watching it later, there was unrecoverable read error in one of the VOB's. Go figure.

That's good.

Does Blu-Ray have the same pause that DVD Video does? Is there a seamless layer break option with Blu-Ray or is it something that just does the job without a pause?

Of course, my first reply here would be don't use CMC media. That it is the problem. Of course, many times, you won't know the Manufacturer's ID until you open the package. Unless, of course, the package says Memorex on it. Then, run like Hell!

Why should anyone want to stick with CMC media? It's bottom of the barrel.

I don't know. Maybe. Beats me.

One thing I think should be said about the Preview function. Not all the available stars can be previewed for a specific disc. You can also double click on the star lines and get a preview that way. I have to admit, I don't know why some stars appear when there's no preview for them.

Found one. For anyone interested, it's old but it does most of what I wanted it to do. http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Hard...nload-1176.html

No, I'm not paying for something that should have come free with my PC. I should have said free software only, please.

My new computer, like a lot of modern computers, did not come with a hard drive light in the case to indicate when the hard drive is being accessed. So, I was wondering if there was something that could run in the System Tray that could indicate when the HD is being accessed? Can anyone recommend an application or if there even is one? Thanks!

I know that what we call in the States as seasons are called series in the UK. So, a series finale means the final episode of a series, e.g. what we would call a season finale. So, what do they call the final episode of a show ever? That we in the States call a series finale, but, what about in the UK? Don't know why this topic interests me, but, it does. Thanks!

Yeah, PC World has mentioned ImgBurn before, too.

I was reading an article in the most recent PC World magazine. It was talking about how sometimes firmware updates can be obtained on bootable CD images. The article mentioned ImgBurn as the application to use for burning the image. So, way to go ImgBurn.

I found a way. I imported the VOB into DVD-Lab Pro and "joined" the "sections" into a new VOB that had all the chapter breaks and even had the forethought of making sure the audio matched the video , a common problem I've encountered before.

I tried PGCEdit already, too. The output created with this method is not loadable in DVDShrink. Shrink returns the error that it cannot find VTS_01_2.VOB. Plus, the files created lock up my DVD player software when I try to load them.

Sure did. Tried it again just now. No file to input.

That's not working. Under ReAuthor in DVDShrink, there's no input from the target directory which can be loaded, e.g. no files in the right pane to move into the left pane. So, I can't do that, it seems.

I've got a video stream in the form of 3 files VTS_01_0.BUP VTS_01_0.IFO and VTS_01_1.VOB I need to create a VIDEO_TS.IFO from this stream so it can be read in things like DVDShrink and other programs. Any way I can do this? Thanks!

Turns out it doesn't do much good. Microsoft just re-enables the download periodically.

So, I was in Staples the other day and noticed what appeared to be a new brand of DVD's and CD's. It caught my eye. But, when I took a look at them, they were just Memorex discs with a different style and logo on them than they had been using before. I guess they felt people knew too much about the low quality, in general, of Memorex media and thought by changing the logo, they could fool people into buying them again. Still, a horse of another color is still just a horse.

My new computer did not come with a floppy drive, nor is there a floppy drive controller on the motherboard for me to add one. However, I have seen USB floppy drives in a store here in town. I was wondering if anyone knew if you could boot from these drives with a bootable floppy. I think it depends on if your BIOS supports booting from USB drives, right? I think mine does so, in theory, one of these USB floppy drives should boot from a bootable floppy? Thanks!

I only went with AVG because in one of those threads, someone said they used it to cure it. I figure why not go with something I know works.

Looks like getting rid of that root kit also fixed another problem I was encountering. On start, Firefox was putting a DLL with some kind of Adware in it in the TEMP directory. ZoneAlarm found it each time. But, after removing the root kit files, that stopped, too.