Marc A.

I didn't say it wasn't impossible, I said it was rare. Compare the amount of news items on Mac viruses and PC viruses and you'll see my point.

Well, sure, of course it's possible. It's less likely to occur, however, because anything based on Unix (which OS X is of course) usually needs operator approval for things to be installed and/or system files to be updated. Aside from that: while I agree that it's wholly possible and that it does happen from time to time, the truth of the matter is that it's been a "possible threat" for over a decade and we haven't seen much. I'm living in the now with an incredibly reliable machine that gets work done, rather than gets worked on.

This whole thread is why I bought a Mac and never went back.

Ha, yep, about 45 minutes away from you.

It was my favorite until they announced they're dropping support for H.264, which is absolutely ridiculous. My order of preference now: 1. Safari for general browsing (great speed) 2. Firefox for web development 3. Well, that's it.

Ha, next time I'll read the whole thread before replying.

It couldn't hurt to grab a back-up solution while you're doing computer purchases/swaps/etc. A simple external hard-drive and some backup software, or something hosted in the 'cloud' such as http://mozy.com/ or http://www.backblaze.com/ That way, your computer can kick the bucket anytime it wants and all of your important stuff is elsewhere waiting to jump back onto your new computer/hard-drive.

No kidding? I admit that I know little about this stuff, but it just looks like it's welcoming the environment to get in there and screw stuff up. I'll chat with Leo about it—in fact, he and I connected today about panels and other stuff. Thanks for the tip! Originally Posted By: Allan GO to your local GM dealer. They still stock them. Wow … they must not change very much over the years?

One of the things my Monte came without is a flywheel inspection cover. It seems to me that it's just begging for debris/rocks to jump in there when the car's in motion, so I'd love to get a replacement cover and install it. Can anybody lend advice as to where I'd go about getting one for my 1970?

Sounds like RAM, but if securing it to the board only made the situation worse, then something's definitely up. It's likely that you can look up the beep pattern and determine what it is depending on your computer brand/model and/or the motherboard brand/model. For example, if it's a Dell Model ABC, then doing a Google search for "Dell ABC motherboard beeps 12 times" may provide you with some answers. If, however, it's a custom-built PC, you'll have to find out the motherboard's brand/model simply by opening it up again and using an eagle-eye to (hopefully) find the brand and model number printed somewhere on the motherboard (the main board that stands vertically inside the computer which has a majority of the chips 'n what-not.) Then, simply search for the same thing, in Google, but substitute the motherboard's name/model in the query. Otherwise, if you care enough about the computer, you may have to bring it somewhere where folks can get their hands/eyes on it to test things.

Agreed; if you have the time/energy/patience, nothing's as good as a reformat on Windows. Well, maybe throwing it out and buying a computer that runs on a different operating system, but we won't get into that never-ending debate

If you don't already have it, I'd highly recommend installing/running SpyBot. It's pretty good at getting all of the other bad things on your system.

My mother got an iPad a week after it came out and has barely touched her PC since.

Maybe? I'm a Mac guy, personally, and it's been a while since I dealt with PCs/Windows, but I imagine that the answer to your question is 'depends on the BIOS.' Some may notice that a proper video output device isn't detected and then it'll halt the Windows boot process, others may not care and boot up windows anyway. If the latter happens, you won't see anything on screen (of course), but you may hear the Windows start up sound and/or see the drive-activity lights blinking away on the front of the tower.

Sounds like the computer's video card (whether it is in fact a separate card, or on the motherboard) isn't outputting video at all. If it were, the monitor would sense it and the power light would turn green (and, well, you'd get an image on the monitor). If this happened after a move, it's likely that a) you have a video card plugged into your motherboard (rather than on-board video) and it got jostled around during the move and is no longer seated properly in the slot. If you're not against opening the case up and looking inside, you'll be able to (quite easily) tell if the video card has slipped out of its slot, even slightly.