really weird problems with my computer...

[Tokki Wartooth]

Let me say ahead of time that this is a new (less than 2 months old) computer, and according to my last virus check (less than one week ago), it's completely virus free.

First, it came with Word Perfect (no, really, it sucks? I've never heard that one before!) instead of MSWord. I'd be happy to delete it except I need a word processing program a little more advanced than Word Pad to do my essays and such. Now, this has happened to me several times, the most recent, being about 5 minutes ago; I highlighted a section of text to change the font size, and after I did so, all of it became red-underlined as though I had suddenly spelled an entire paragraph wrong. Not knowing what else to do, I right click it, and the program closes, completely and without warning. Not even asking if I want to save my file first. When I open again, the backup document they give me is what I had long before even my first save.

As if that's not enough, my computer also does something else weird. I was ripping some CDs I bought onto my HD, and they went into a little folder under the CD title, right? So I renamed them properly and put them into my music folder, deleting the folder they had been downloaded into. Nothing strange there. Then I go on my computer the next day, look in my music folder, and the songs are gone. In fact, the folder that I have previously deleted has returned, and the songs are all back in it, with their original names. I thought at first maybe it was something wrong with the CD I bought, then I did the same with some CDs I burned, and the exact same things happened.

So tell me. Is it something wrong with my computer, or the program? (Or me? )

[Shoeberto]

If you want a good alternative to the pay word processors, I'd go with OpenOffice. It works really well - I've yet to have a problem with it that wasn't PEBKAC.

As for the problem with la musica, it seems really strange. What did you use to rip it? Did you rip it into the standard My Documents\My Music folder? Was the CD an original, store-bought or a CD-R copy? (I doubt this would matter any, but I dunno. Maybe some CD rippers have anti-piracy stuff.)

Lastly, does anyone use your computer that might have deleted it?

[Samuraid]

What program did you use to rip/organize your music? Some programs keep a heavy hand over where all the music files are placed and will automatically arrange them.

[Tokki Wartooth]

I used Windows Media player. But it's like, they went into the folder gradually. Like, I burned about 10 CDs one night, then only one CD folder would go back, then I'd click around a bit, then the next folder, then the next, etc.

And I'd lvoe to download anotehr word processor, but my school's firewall prevents me from downloading pretty much anything.

[crono_logical]

It's probably the copy protection crap and other weird things then MS forces upon stuff you rip to their audio format using Windows Media Player. WMP is not a decent ripping program at all. (Plus newer versions have spyware/usage tracking and reporting built into it.) I'll leave others to recommend ripping tools, since I doubt you'd like the command line ones I'd probably use if I had any CDs

In addition to virus checks, you should also run stuff like AdAware to remove spyware too, which virus scanners won't pick up a lot of the time.

As for programs closing completely without warning and giving no messages, it probably crashed and Windows might be set to not tell you anything about what it's doing to keep you confused You can change that in Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Error Reporting button. A good choice is Disable Error Reporting but enable Notifying you of errors.

Firewalls won't block you from downloading stuff off websites (not easily without you being unable to browse normally too), so you should still be able to download quite a bit of decent free software. Your school's firewall would most likely only be blocking file-sharing/P2P methods of downloading stuff.

[Peegee]

that's what I've been trying to tell her.

Bother me for musicmatch sometime

[Shoeberto]

Bother me for musicmatch sometime

Trying to force MusicMatch on her? You're a meany.

Go with CDex. Simple, clean program. No naggingness or five minute load times like MusicMatch.

[Peegee]

I haven't ripped cds in ages. The last program I used WAS musicmatch

asl?

[Samuraid]

It's probably the copy protection crap and other weird things then MS forces upon stuff you rip to their audio format using Windows Media Player.

It doesn't force any copy protection on you at all.

And please, for goodness sake don't anyone use musicmatch. Poorly written program.

[Peegee]

wtf musicmatch rules yo

[crono_logical]

It doesn't force any copy protection on you at all.

The default setting is content protection is enabled, so copy protection is enabled by default, and since the average user wouldn't know about this let alone find out how to disable it, I call that forcing

[Tokki Wartooth]

I have musicmatch, but I don't want it, it's ugly.

So does if mean these songs won't stop renaming themselves and going back into untitled folders (they did it again today, this is the 4th time I think?) do I need to rip them all over again with a different program? Because I really don't want to. There were 33 CDs. That took several hours last time, and now I actually have work to do. I just want to listen to music as I do my essays!!!!

[Samuraid]

The default setting is content protection is enabled, so copy protection is enabled by default, and since the average user wouldn't know about this let alone find out how to disable it, I call that forcing

Ah, I see.

[crono_logical]

I have musicmatch, but I don't want it, it's ugly.

So does if mean these songs won't stop renaming themselves and going back into untitled folders (they did it again today, this is the 4th time I think?) do I need to rip them all over again with a different program? Because I really don't want to. There were 33 CDs. That took several hours last time, and now I actually have work to do. I just want to listen to music as I do my essays!!!!

Why not play the CDs straight from your drive until you have time to rip with a better program then?

[Tokki Wartooth]

Because that's less variety! See, in that situation I would get to listen to only 20 songs at most, when I SHOULD have 500+ on my computer to listen to. Sure repetition would not only hinder my essay-writing skills, but make me depressed as well.

And ok, another random problem: my computer shuts off without warning. This is the second time. It can't be a good thing