3 Paws Saloon Attic

Ok Val, thank you! Thing seem to be running alright now.

Sounds like a server being worked on to me, Trish, at least it was temporary. 

Hmmmm.... things seem to be working ok on my end, BEAN'ette.   Have you changed anything on your computer? Added a toolbar, or switched browsers? Downloaded something? Updated?  I ask this because computer 'freezes' are normally caused by some program conflict, or a strain on resources.    I have difficulties posting when my anti-virus program is scanning for problems, or if I've too many windows open. 
I'd ask if the pictures are in an accepted format - but if they weren't you'd get a message saying so. 

If you're still experiencing problems , please post up your systems info ( like windows xp , pc /laptop/wireless, firefox/modzilla browser)  and I'll see if I can trouble shoot it.  The more info you can give me, the more likely I can find a solution. 

Well... i can use 'attach image' in the messages section but can't use it in the scavenger hunt... hummmm... it just won't work for me. My computer doesn't freeze, just the site... it says 'it's not responding' then i have to close this window and open another. This only happenes in the scavenger hunt section.

Yup, I've tried different images. I even added a new 'on top' image and it worked!! LOL! Go figure. Guess I just can't play the scavenger hunt that's all.

Hmmm...  so neither of you can add images to the Scavanger Hunt thread - but can everywhere else?  How perplexing!   How ever, I had no problem uploading to that thread... that so muddies the water!

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with the uploader or your computer if you can add images to other threads.  That leaves the thread itself...  Well, what we could try is closing out that particular thread, and start a new one to see if you can add to the new thread.   Tell you what, I know it's frustrating, but let's give it the weekend, in case it's some glitch.   I want you both to keep trying to upload to that thread. Try different images.  I know I asked for a mommy fox with babies - but hey, any old pic will do. In fact, try uploading a picture to that thread that you were successful with in another thread.   If that works then we know it had something to do with the image you tried to upload.  Keep me posted  on results!

Glad to see the Scanger Hunt thread seems to be working fine, for you both now.

Val...I was just wondering.  If you took "Didi's" off the Tips and Tricks maybe others will post some tips and tricks there too.  Some might think that they can't cuz my name is there.
Just a thought

This is a minor thing but it's annoying....

occasionally it decides of it's own accord to go from *oldest first" to "newest first"....why does it do that?

I was just wondering... where did my 'Word Of The Day' thread go to? :c)

Awww thank you Val! :c)

This MAY be a issue on my end....but if it is I need to know how to fix it!

When playing Clue on the games forum, it gave me a runtime error and shut down.Is this a *you need to update your runtime stuff* or is this a glitch, or what?

And also...why is valkirye such a wondrous hostie? :)

I get that too, but not from here.  I get it when I have too many things on my browser and have it on for a while.  I noticed that is when I get that runtime error and it shuts down, it never does it in here.

Sure you can, Mus!  All you need to do is go into "MAILBOXES" , click start a new topic, label it Musical's Mailbox,  and there you go.   Easy-peasy.   I assume you'd like a 'fancier' box though, and I know you don't do graphics.   What would you like on it? Dragons, cats? Fairies?  

I think you mean Amy Brown's "companions". She is a very talented lady.  I'll see what I can do.

Ok, first, your mailbox is done. Amy Brown's work is copyrighted, so I opted to create you one based on her 'Companions'.   Hope you like it.

About your game: first check what sound system the game uses. It might be that if you updated that system, the older form no longer works.  Or you may have inadvertantly deleted that system.   Next check the CD itself, and see if it needs cleaning ( even fingerprints can disrupt loading). Remember to wipe the CD in a circular motion towards the outside rim.   Otherwise you can scratch up the CD's grooves.  If you've had the game for a number of years, it may have just gone bad.
You might look at the casing and see if there's a 1-800 number you might call for further help.   Hope this helped!

Being able to post any kind of 'file' requires  us to have a 'gold membership'. In an effort to keep the Attic free to use, I forewent that option.  No where do I find a listing of what kinds of images we CAN upload, so we're all learning by trial and error. BMP and JPG are two different file formats. Jpg is compressed meaning it throws away information (the information which is deemed to be "unimportant") and  takes less room to store. The designers of the jpg format were good and so even though files are compressed as much as 1/10 or 1/20 their original size, the lost information is usually undetectable to the average viewer. Compression of more than 1/20 (i.e. the final file is 1/20 or less of the original bmp size) will start to become more and more detectable, with unsightly flaws generally called "jpg artifacts."  So, it really isn't the website not understanding the file, but a case of 'storage'.

If you don’t have Photoshopor some other photo editing software on your computer, you can use Paint to convert from BMP to JPG. Here’s how to do it:

First open Microsoft Paint by going to Start, All Programs, Accessoriesand then Paint.   Open the BMP file in Paint. Now all you have to do to save the file in JPG format is to simply do a Save As. Change the File Type drop down menu to JPG and click Save. JPG is the same as JPEG. 

Easy peasy, no?

I suspect you encountered some sort of glitch.  But as to why it appeared as 'gobbledy-gook', I've no clue. I suppose for some weird reason it may have briefly shown as  BB coding, but that's a haphazard guess on my part.  The main thing is it righted itself.

Hmmmmmmm OK I get all red Xs too....thought maybe it was just me!

I have just got to say, the guys at Activeboard are just super.  I wrote them about the red Xs, and recived this answer ( less then 12 hours later):
Hi Valkricry,

This seems to be a small bug with a recent update we performed. We have
found a solution and you should see the fix in about a day. Thank you
for spotting that and we apologize for any inconvenience you or your
users have suffered as a result.

Cheers,
Sparklit Support

AND when I peeked on my way over here, the pictures are already back!  I don't call response like that from MSN, EVER!

How do we post pictures that move? I'm talking about gif's as apposed to jpeg's. I've been posting only jpeg's but I have a ton of gif tags but the movement doesn't show up.

Oh.. ok thanks Val... I could put some in my photobucket account.

I'm going to assume you're running Windows XP, and seeing a message stating "Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file." Unless you have very little physical memory (RAM) in your system, this message is indicative of a buggy application with a memory leak.

A memory leak is a common problem caused by poorly written or poorly debugged applications where they continually use more and more memory until you shut down the program, end the process manually or restart Microsoft Windows.

Virtual memory, also known as a page file or swap file, is a file on your hard drive (C:\pagefile.sys by default) that Windows and applications use in addition to physical memory (RAM) as needed. The default and recommended size of this file is 1.5 times the amount of physical memory. Virtual memory is the sum of physical memory and the page file. So if your computer has 512 MB RAM, it will have a 768 MB page file by default, for a total of 1.25 GB of physical + virtual memory.

Finding the source of the problem

First you need to determine which application is causing the problem.

Hit Control-Alt-Delete to bring up Task Manager (on certain XP Professional configurations you'll need to click the Task Manager button after hitting Control-Alt-Delete). You can also access Task Manager by holding down Control and Shift and pressing Escape.

Go to the Processes tab in Task Manager. Here you will see a list of all the processes (applications or parts thereof) that are running on your system. You will see the memory usage here, but in my experience this very rarely has anything to do with problems running low on virtual memory.

Click View, Select Columns.



Check the Virtual Memory Size box, as circled in the screen shot below and click OK.

Now you have a VM Size column in your Processes tab. Click the top of the VM Size column (as circled below) twice to arrange the processes by their VM Size from largest to smallest.

You'll see in this Task Manager shot that Mozilla Firefox is taking up the most virtual memory at about 237 MB, with Internet Explorer the next biggest at about 81 MB. (the number of KB divided by 1024 equals MB) For both, this is the consequence of leaving them open for more than a week straight. Almost every application will use more memory the longer you keep it open, though some are worse than others. This is one reason that Windows becomes more and more unresponsive the longer you keep it running, and why you end up eeding to restart your computer periodically.

Once you determine which process is using more virtual memory than it should, you need to determine what the process is. Some are pretty obvious, like winword.exe is Microsoft Word, iexplore.exe is Internet Explorer, and so on. Others aren't so obvious. The best way to determine the source of a specific process is to use a search engine to search for the Image Name as shown in Task Manager.

Resolution

Now that you know which application is causing the problem, let's resolve it.

One common thing to try is to uninstall and reinstall the offending application if possible. Searching the Internet, and checking the support site of the software vendor would be the next two steps I would try. Without knowing which application is at fault, it's difficult to recommend a specific solution.


Many thanks to Dave Taylor for help with this.

Sometimes linking directly to audio or video files can cause problems because the website isn't fast enough to support "streaming" video playback on the fly. The 'W' MAY be a downloadable file in this case.   It's hard to say without being able to see an example of what your talking about.  On the other hand  'w' may also stand for windows media player, then usually that's WMP....