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Computers 101

Q:
I was burning a CD-R the other day and got a "buffer underrun" error. The CD was useless and I had to start over. What causes that?

A:
The short version - Your computer didn't send information to the CD-R fast enough.

The long version - CD-R drives put information from your hard drive into a "buffer" (i.e.
memory area) before they write it to the CD. The idea behind a buffer is to maintain a steady flow of information to the unit.

When you burn a CD, it's done on the fly. The CD-R drive tries to keep its buffer full (or close to it) at all times. As long as there is information in the buffer, the CD-R drive can write to the CD.

If the buffer gets emptied out and not refilled (usually due to the computer being busy with something else) the CD-R drive has nothing to write to the CD that's spinning inside of it. Unfortunately, a CD has to have information on every section that's written, so you end up with the buffer underrun error and (in most cases) a CD-R disk that's as worthless as a 286.

To help prevent this problem, don't mess with your computer while it's writing to a CD (you may want to disable your screen saver too).

Tip of the Day

Checking It Out

Web Link - http://www.worldstart.com/tips/checkingitout.htm

Got a computer question but don't know where to turn? If the question is simple enough, try typing it (or a relevant term) into a search engine.

You'll be surprised how often you can find an answer to your question. It's what I do when I get stumped (yes, believe it or not, even I get stumped. More often than I'd like to admit :-). Of course, our message board is an excellent source for searching computer questions too:

http://www.worldstart.com/ctmb.htm

Search engines are also a great way to check out hoaxes, viruses, drivers, and tons more. I know it may seem obvious to many of you, but I can't tell you the number of times in a week I tell people to try this - and how often it works!

My favorite Search Engine? Google. It almost seems to do telepathic searches! You know, you type in what you're looking for and it finds exactly that. Here's the link:

http://www.google.com

If that doesn't work, I go to DogPile. It's my second favorite. It's actually a meta-search engine, meaning it gives you results from a bunch of different search engines for your keyword. Here's the link for it:

http://www.dogpile.com

Amanda's Cool Site of the Day

Dinosaur News

Do you like Dinosaurs? Do those prehistoric critters fascinate you? Do you have a child who's into dinosaurs? If so this might be the site for you. It has a dinosaur games, news, links, and a dinosaur mall. The news section contains exhibit information, new dinosaur discoveries, and much more. Take a look at this prehistoric goodie.

http://www.dinosaurnews.org/

Do you have a cool site that you want to share? Send it to Amanda! Here's her address:

amanda@worldstart.com

Oh, and we're looking for non-commercial sites. We generally don't run sites that are strictly for shopping.