Technical Advice

System
System Posts: 100,537 🤖 Admin 🤖
edited June 8 in Student community
Need some technical advice from all you computer whizzes..................

I bought a (refurbished) Toshiba sat pro 4200 for my little girl but it wont play her dvd's.

The shop has offered to swap it for a "celeron 650"

Whats this and is it any good?

By the way, I am as technical as a house brick, so "baby words" only please :oops:

Comments

  • System
    System Posts: 100,537 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Re:Technical Advice

    Is it a DVD player or just a CD writer?

    when you say "Wont play her DVDs" how do you mean...

    is the CD drive broke (IE will it not come out and in);

    if it does open and close, when the CD is in can you hear it spinning (a slight whirring noise)

    if not go to My computer and when the icons load, locate the CD drive and see if there is a CD icon there, if there is then the CD drive is recognising the CD/DVD... right click on it and choose "EXPLORE"
    Go into the _VIDEOS folder (if a DVD this folder will normally be here) or locate an Icon which bears the Media Player or the default movie player. Double click on it, that should start the DVD... if not...

    Is there an error message that appears saying "Cannot play DVD" if so, this could be down to out of date codecs which the PC needs to play almost the majority of new dvds.
    Codecs simply decode packets of data ripped from the CD and processes them into Visuals on screen and Audios via speakers.... go to google and type in "K-Lite Codecs Full"

    Download the FULL Version, (about 39MB) and install it - this is the most up to date codec supplier out. And I use them @ home.

    after the install, try to play the DVD again. If it doesn't work let me know. I'll check online tonight to see how you're doing.



  • System
    System Posts: 100,537 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Re:Technical Advice

    As for the Celeron 650... the 650 stands for 650MHz(megahertz), if you think of todays average procesor speed of upwards of 2.0GHz (1000MHz = 1GHz(gigahertz)) you'll notice 650 is relativly slow and depending on what you had paid originally, I wouldn't bother accept it.

    You have to think of the whole package when buying PC goods as one PC component is more or less performance reliant on another component.... IE There's no point having a really fast dual core processer (CPU) if you only have 64MB RAM (memory). Therefore, you know that when you buy something with a slower than average CPU, you will also be sold something with below average to average components.

    Get yourself on Ebay and find a lappy on there, or a desktop PC they go for dirty cheap.... also I found a snazzy site which sells things sort of like the Loot but also does freebies and goes off cities.

    go to google and type Your City followed by gumtree..

    ie

    manchester gumtree

    The web site is something like manchester.gumtree.org, and they sell PCs on there too!

    J
  • System
    System Posts: 100,537 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Re:Technical Advice

    Hiya J, good ta hear from ya mate.

    I first bought my 7yr old an IBM laptop with a dvd cd rw an a "huge memory" but the dvd player was crap, the guy in the shop said it was not the best machine for what I wanted, then the thing just broke down! I got the tosh as a temp replacement and have now been offered the celeron.

    All I want is a lappy that we can play games on, watch dvds an let my little girl write her "VERY" important letters on :lol:

    Obviously I want one that will last her a couple of years b4 I have to update it, oh an I would like to do the books on it too.

    The tosh has only a cd on it but the shop have offered to fit a dvd in it. What would you advise.
  • System
    System Posts: 100,537 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Re:Technical Advice

    I'm guessing the graphics are integrated with the laptop as standard and it will play the basic games, but a 7 year old won't be playing world of warcraft or settlers and age of empires etc...

    Just fi it with a DVD drive, see what happens:-)

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