the vynsane asylum

not sure how to fix, and i've not necessarily encountered the same thing, but i know chrome does a lot of behind-the-scenes resource conservation, so windows/tabs that aren't in focus don't process until they're given focus. say you clicked on a link and then immediately changed to another tab, if the previous tab hadn't processed the request then it will only do so once you go back to it.

My DVD burner stopped working.
After I convert my video files I get an "insert disc in drive" message even though there is one.

Some online searching suggested I might need a driver update, which I've tried via:
start > control panel > system > hardware > device manager > dvd/cd-rom drives > ATAPI DVD A DH16AYH > update driver
I get the message: "The wizard could not find a better match for your hardware than the software you currently have installed."

Suggestions?

Have you tried uninstalling the driver, then reinstalling it?

No idea how to do that.

I know this is going to sound snarky, and that's not my intention, but Google it. If I try to tell you how to do it without actually doing it myself, I'm going to fuck something up.

Didn't feel like making a new thread so I'll put it here.

A few weeks ago I got blue screen of deathed...twice (I was on Skype both times so I'm blaming that) and then my computer wouldn't fully log on (it would only get to the black screen before login and have my pointer but no further). It was running fine and pretty fast. I reloaded my OS (it's older. I think Vista or XP but that's what was always on it) and now that it's reloaded it runs soooooo fucking slow. As in I can't even watch Youtube videos because they're all choppy and such and it even takes a longer than it every fucking should while to get a page to open on here. Anyone got a clue what's up other than that I should probably get a new OS and get with the times? It's also an older laptop (Dell XPS M1730).

shit. that doesn't sound good. it could be a hardware issue (hard drive, motherboard, video card, or other) or a file issue (corrupt file system, etc). i honestly don't know.

BLOOMP BLOOMP BLOOMP!!

Mac question: System locked up, then won't start back. It gets to the Apple logo screen, and the circle whirs around, well, forever. It looks like a boot drive issue.

Is there a way to connect the drive to a Windows-based computer (or install it in said computer) to get any data off of it? Apple is really unhelpful, and Google is resulting in tons of contradictions.

I would think a hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive, worst case scenario I'd pull it out & get an external enclosure with a usb hookup & plug it in - you should be able to access it like a regular external hard drive? Dunno.

generally speaking, drives running OSX or used exclusively with the apple ecosystem are formatted with HFS+ file system which is incompatible with Windows systems. Windows uses NTFS (newer) or FAT32 (older) file systems. there are utilities that you can use to allow Windows to at least read HFS+ (so you can retrieve the data) and some can read/write, so you can use the drive as an external on either platform. here's a write up on such utilities.

if the computer were operable you could log in over the network and have read/write access, as that process somehow handles the file system conversion behind the scenes, but physically mounting a drive on a computer that doesn't understand the file system used is not supported out-the-box on either platform.