Read This - Will Help Us Answer Your Questions Better

[beeboy]

Welcome to the forum! Not to worry Maristel. Most of us that hang around here, came here looking for help. So we've been in the same boat. We are here because we enjoy people and helping them out.
Many people are totally unaware and new to the forum thing. It can be confusing and people are already preoccupied with their problem. This is to be expected. Most of us are very patient. Enjoy the forum!

[spongebob2]

Originally posted by chrisinthesun20

Quote: Poopy
excuse me, are you 12 or something?

YES ACTUALLY POOPY

[Cat-Walker]

Originally posted by sniperfav
very good point. i see why my question didnt get answered too quick. lol.

I dont have the answer either,but I got a question! Where'd u git th jumping car from,th red one--PLEASE,seriously?

[Cat-Walker]

Originally posted by Ari Rahikkala
Summarizing a couple of choice parts of http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html for these XPist unwashed masses...

Before you ask

Take the time to try to solve your problem yourself. Ask your friends and the local computer guru. Search the web (Google!) and technical support boards; Somebody might have had the same problem as you before.

One good tactic for Google and bulletin boards is searching for the exact error message (or the most distinctive part of it) you received. Note what this implies; By asking questions informatively, you are actually helping others since people who have the same problem as you in the future can just read the answer that has been given to your question.

When you ask

Choose your subject line with care. It's what gets people to look at your question, after all. The subject should be a very concise explanation of your problem and include as much information as sensefully possible. Using huge amounts of abbreviations or writing subject lines that are so long that the board software cuts them off is deprecated, though.

Write your question in clear, grammatical and correctly spelled English. If you don't have the time to formulate your question correctly, why would you expect other people to have the time to answer it? Don't worry if English isn't your native language, though - people will cut you some extra slack for grammar mistakes.

Remember to include all the information that is relevant to your problem, but as little more as possible. Just dumping the output of a random system analyzer program on the forum will only make people ignore you - besides, it will give the idea that you're not willing to go through the trouble of figuring out what things are relevant to your problem and what aren't. Describe the relevant parts of your system in more detail than the irrelevant ones. Describe deviations instead of expectable things.

If possible, describe the changes that you've made to your system before it broke. Do this even if it seems that there ought to be no relation between what you did and what happened. Computers are complicated things. Also describe what you've already tried to do to solve the problem.

Don't say that your problem is urgent or write your subject in ALLCAPS. It might be urgent to you, but that's irrelevant to the question itself. You aren't paying for the service so you don't get to set the priorities.

Oh, and don't forget common sense. Having read through this doc, don't forget to follow rules that I have omitted but that are clearly required for senseful problem-solving.
---
BTW, a couple of notes for those who are going to read that document itself: First, hackers aren't the guys who crack into computer systems, they're people who like playing with technology and programming. Secondly, it's geared towards asking questions in newsgroups and/or mailing lists, which have different traditions than bulletin boards. Some things carry over, some don't; For example, if you want to indicate to people that your problem is fixed and they don't need to spend their time on it anymore, you'd edit the title of the first post (and thus the thread... well, this depends on the BB software) to include the word "Fixed". But you would not start a new thread just to indicate that your problem is solved.

This post is in public domain (although the document I summarized is not - see http://www.catb.org/~esr/copying.html ). Feel free to quote, mangle and distribute it with or without reference to me...

First time I came upon some good reding all-day! It actually alerted me of some of the mistakes I have made in the pass and will help me reduce them in the present future if there is such a place. Thanks for the time you share with others. Cat Walker

[Disk_Contented]

Originally posted by njovin

b) Ask questions specific to certain (and rare) pieces of hardware or software that are better resolved by calling said company's tech support or simply reading the manual.

Supposing the item in question is no longer supported? Maybe the original documentation is lost?

I consider point "b" invalid. Questions relating to that are the whole point of boards like this aren't they. You may strike lucky and find another user who has just what you need.

BTW. Who is the Moderating team? I see "The Tool" is still here, but even he is not clearly marked as Staff.

[pdn]

Just so that everyone knows, that there are other forums out there also just in case some one can't find the help here that your looking for. I'm not trying to fan people away from this forum by no means. It's just that some problems work better with different suggestions (forums such as: .www.computing.net, www.xpfreedom.com, www.annoyances.org , just to name a few). As for me, I just found this forum and I enjoy helping people out also. I'm no expert, by no means, but I strongly feel that I can hold my on.

[lyricalbenjie]

<marquee>Testing message, sorry </marquee>

[Azn_tweaker]

same here im not an expert.. everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect. so dont think ur stupid

[Richard Jr]

I did a disstrutive system recovery because my comp. crashed now my comp. doesn't know I have a cdrw drive I have windows XP home version, I have tried just about everything, I think if I had the program I probly could reinstall it, I have done many application recoverys and nothing seems to work.

[mixerman]

Many people don't understand that thos who help out on the board are busy professionals. I, myself, get frustrated when I eel like valuable board space (as well as many people's time) is wasted when someone posts a bad question.


There is NO such thing as a BAD question. If it needs asking it needs answered

[Rann_03]

thought it was somethin' lol haha oh well...

[libraviper]

I have read many of these posts, including the one about knowing what to include in the post, etc. While I do understand that you experts are very busy and this is free service, I'm only here because I need your help. As things have gone for me, I haven't even been able to PAY for advice and service, let alone go back to my original seller and ask questions. Of course, if anyone out there is like me, after a year you have to disappear or buy a new computer and trash the old one when it starts to encounter problems.

Because I'm not an advanced guru, my problems are probably quite simple and pish-poshed by all the advanced professionals within this forum. However, I have just posted twice and have viewers, but no answers.

If my post is hard to understand because I don't know how to word it, it's probably because -----

IF i knew how to word things, i wouldn't be here asking for help.

Everyone has a specialty and with it comes terminology. I'm a legal secretary and know how to spell big complicated medical and legal terms and know what they mean, but I can't configure my daggone computer.

I've used all the sites for tech support I can handle. All the instructions are great until I get half through and something isn't like the instructions say -- If anyone can help, I would appreciate it. If not, throw me a bone.

[antiupdater]

Ok people, I've found this forum and I'm just trying to prevent everyone who cares about the microsoft's update service....Microsoft is trying to expand their commercial coverage using non-commercial procedures (everything is valid in business)using some of their embeeded applications for opening non standard ports and get some system and user's preferences monitoring, but, most of all, to minimize the pc usage only for Microsoft's products.

Now we know, and I have to say it 'cause I was in the Microsoft's team, that the objective is monopolize the software factorying only for Microsoft or their bigger partners, but now Nasa and some very big and important world-wide institutions had changed their platforms to Linux, Unix or Oracle; more simple and efficient operative Systems.

Of course, this Microsoft's tentative of world monopolization is becoming the sword that kills themselves, yet the new open ports that Microsoft creates with their Windows Update Service just becomes the computer more able to suffer hacker attacks, but far away, this incremets the system complexity and so on, the
perfomance...you'll see how your system disk increases and increases without any available reason, but now you know why.

Now you decide; but if you are a Microsoft's friend, some business manager or a simple money-maker, just keep joining the Microsoft's Circum in your nearest Saloon, get funny and exploit whose don't know.

[MacG]

Translation.

Ok people, I've found this forum and I'm just trying to prevent everyone who cares about the Microsoft's update service.

Microsoft is trying to expand their commercial coverage using non-commercial procedures (everything is valid in business) using some of their embeded applications for opening non standard ports to get some system and user's preferences monitoring, but, most of all, to minimize the PC usage only for Microsoft's products.

Now we know, and I have to say it because I was in the Microsoft team, that the objective is to monopolize the software factorying only for Microsoft or their bigger partners, but now Nasa and some very big and important world-wide institutions had changed their platforms to Linux, Unix or Oracle; more simple and efficient operative Systems.

Of course, this Microsoft's tentative of world monopolization is becoming the sword that kills themselves, yet the new open ports that Microsoft creates with their Windows Update Service just makes the computer more susceptible to hacker attacks, but far away, this increases the system complexity and so on, and affects the perfomance. You'll see how your system disk activity increases and increases without any apparent reason. Now you know why.

Now you decide; but if you are a friend of Microsoft, a business manager or a simple money-maker, just keep joining the Microsoft's Circum in your nearest Saloon, get funny and exploit whose don't know.

The truth is something quite different. Ever since George Orwell wrote 1984 corporate business has been using the computer to check on people's viewing preferences, gathering "marketing" information".

In fact they are looking into your morality. At least that is what they say they are doing.

The way it works is simple. God is all-seeing. You look at pornography with your computer. God knows that you are looking at pornography and the Holy see then gives Holy orders to kill you for looking at pornography.

This same immoral roman church "leader" whose people still commit incest in the name of Droit de Seigneur.

The plot increased with the englishman "Lord" Longford, who "legalised" pornography, and now those who "legalise" homosexual marriage between, either men, or women.

The "intellectuals" going back to the days of the lesbian Barronne Amandine Dupois have intellectualised that as God is made of pure energy then, as human beings are only made of pure energy too, that the moorality within society does not matter.

Sleep with anyone or anything that you care to sleep with.

Contrary to God.

You may ask why this is so. Because the world is running short of resources, whilst the pope is fighting "satan" in the form of Mr. Greenspan by pouring 4 billion additional "souls" onto the face of the Earth with the intention of having 80 billion MORE!

Why all these babies? So that the merchants can sell "Crap to Rabbits" in their commercial parlance.

Evidently this is NOT the carefully run Military Establishment that we had hoped for for this third millennium.

A single planet, run, not by priests, pornographers, pimps & prostitutes, but by one Army, One Navy and One Airforce would not require any commercial activity.

It could have had One Planetary Protestant Church, which would have protested about ALL of this crime which people commit against each other.

Certainly NO Protestant, and NO Puritan that I know of would EVER sleep with their own children.

As a Moral People, albeit in the minority, we do NOT condone crime nor do we condone those who make their money from immoral earnings.

Nor do we condone this misuse of a public utility as a pornographic broadcasting system, set up to produce a means of sexual entrapment, which those who abuse others deliberately, simply in order to maintain their OWN power, namely the vatican church and the non-Protestant State together with the Orwellian "intellectuals" of the non-military "intelligentia" are currently using to decimate the population on FALSE charges of liking to view pornography.

In fact all Protestant Ministers are Morally Outraged that this should be the case.

But these are responsible Married Men and NOT irresponsible "celibate" priests.

I have NO need of priests and no further time for them.

They have let me down just as they let My Father down.

These are immoral cowards who have no respect for women or for anyone else.

The time has come to sack Rome.

[vetta]

We have recently migrated from NT4 to XP. We have a thinclient application that occasionally needs to register a dll or ocx on client workstations when the application is initiated. This registration process is spawned under the user account credentials - not the local system account. Since the migration to XP this process has failed. I believe the registry has been tied down somewhat in XP and was wondering whether this is the cause of our problems. Does anyone know the exact permissions required for a standard user to be able to register ocx's/dll's under XP? Has anyone else come across this problem ? Any information would be gratefully appreciated.