3 long beeps 4 short beeps
When I walked up to the client’s computer, I noted that it was on and running fine. When I asked what the problem was, she told me “It makes this horrible loud noise when it starts up!”
“From the speakers or from inside the machine,” I asked.
“It’s coming from the speakers, but like nothing I’ve ever heard!”
I restarted the machine and was greeted by a blank screen and three long tones, followed by four shorter ones. Then the process repeated. After five repetitions of this, the computer started normally.
I began to pull cables, and once I yanked the printer USB the sounds stopped. (Shocking. It’s NEVER the cable!) I tried the keyboard and mouse in that same port to make sure it wasn’t the actual slot, and had no problems. It seems this beep code refers to a malfunction USB device. Just swapping the port may help, otherwise replace the cable or device.
Cannot read from the source file or disk – undeletable
Problem:
File shows up in a folder, but any attempt to delete, rename or move it results in : “Error Deleting File or Folder – Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk“.
If it’s a folder, no hidden files are inside it. You can read and write to it. No permissions error, and the file/folder is not set as hidden or read only in properties.
Dropping down to a DOS prompt and trying a DEL, DELTREE, or RN return the same error.
Solution:
This is caused by an invalid character in the file name. Possibly a dot or a space (Spaces are really hard to spot – they’re invisible. But try a rename and just use the arrow keys in the rename box. If there’s a space at the end, the arrow key will find it and move one character past the last letter). Normally Windows will not let you create something with an invalid character in the name, but it can happen if you’re in a system remotely and the connection gets cut off, or if there’s corruption on the Hard disk, or if the file was created by a Mac and then some how transferred over to the system.
I ran across a couple of possible solutions from the command prompt, but if your file has a space in the name, especially in the middle of the name, you won’t be able to run them. Tried a couple of tools, “Killbox” returned a similar error – that the file dosen’t appear to exist. Finally came across “Unlocker”. This app will force a delete of the file. Start up the program and use it’s interface to browse to the file / folder in question (local or network drive, it doesn’t matter. as long as you can browse to it, the application can work with it), and from the actions list select “Delete”. File is immediately deleted. There’s also a “Rename” and a “Move” option. if your trying to preserve the file.
Facebook email hack
My wife turned to me and told me she’d gotten a weird message from my aunt that she didn’t know what to do with. It read;
“Hi….I actually got another friend request from you which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears…then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too….I had to do the people individually. PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT A NEW friendship FROM ME AT THIS TIME.”
You wern’t hacked. It never happened. Your friend didn’t send this and the message is bogus. Don’t do what it says. Don’t forward it, don’t copy and paste, just delete. And while you’re at it, don’t accept new request from people on your friends list already.
If you’re still worried though, change that FB password. Frequent changes and complex passwords are your best defense against this kind of thing!
