I try to shut it down, and I get a grey box (end program wpwin13.exe). And then nothing happens. Shutting down via the task manager yields the same result.

I need help, preferably ASAP.

Why is my vlc media player having problems running things, and why does it now say this next to the vlc symbol on the recently used apps list?

Meh. I prefer bad dreams, they're more interesting. And, strange as it sounds, they're how I know I'm fully sane. It means my mind is processing the messed up world normally.

I would be much more concerned were I experiencing only good dreams.

Good morning!!

@ everyone: I probably should have noted that I don't have a wife and kids.

I had a dream in which I saw Nazis attacking a university. Two tanks drove up onto campus (I remember thinking that it takes three men to work a tank and that I was some day going to be forcibly drafted into the German army to help drive one). The tanks were followed by a man on horseback carrying a cutlass. At this time, I hoped that the tanks wouldn't injure the horse.

I saw teachers and students crowd the doors and windows of the university to see what was going on. The students were all small children. The man on horseback told the tank gunners to begin shooting indiscriminately. They fired at the exterior walls of the buildings, causing masonry to chip and fly off. Somehow, no one was injured in the gunfire. The masonry built up in piles on the campus. Then I blinked and realized that it wasn't masonry that I was looking at. The piles were comprised of books.

Then the man on horseback got off the horse. It was at this point that I realized he had a flamethrower strapped to his back and he was going to burn the books. Thisrealization made the people cowering in the halls recoil in horror. I felt as if it were people the German commandant was going to destroy.

Then I was suddenly in the body of Tom Hanks, who was a teacher at the academy. The sight of the unrepentant destruction of so many books caused red, green and orange lumps to appear on my face. Then I started having conniptions, and one of the headmasters said that I was having a stroke.

The next image was a bit unusual. I saw the yard of a fabulous Victorian era house, and my family (a wife and two kids) were having a picnic nearby. What was unusual about it was that I/Tom Hanks was submerged underground. Only my legs, from the knees down were visible above the soil. My daughter grabbed my feet and pulled me out of the earth as easily as if she had been digging out a carrot. Then she said, "Look mother, I just had the strangest dream."

Suddenly my kids mysteriously dropped dead. The sight of this inspired my wife into a state of perpetual panic, and, oblivious to my/Tom Hanks' presence, she began to shout "The Germans are coming," while running around aimlessly and shrieking endlessly. Her shrieking hurt my ears and I began to worry that she would lead the Germans right to us. Then I woke up.

Don't even get me started on Acer...this thread is about my desktop---I don't even know the brand name because there's no marking anywhere---but my laptop is an Acer that has given me nothing but grief over the past year.

I don't even know how old it is....I got it refurbished for free (the official going rate was $99) as part of a deal for a work term with a particular computer repair shop. They obtained the computer from a university.

Today it turned off and rebooted while I was logging onto explorer...

Oh. Now the home page is fine.

Good grief...

Oh no...

I had to abort the fragging at nineteen percent because the friggin' screen froze...it happened while I was trying to look at files on the drive. I tried to minimize everything, but instead the three windows disappeared but for the upper left hand corner. There was no icons, and nothing I could click on anywhere. I had to cut power.

In booting back up, it takes forever to get the internet running, and my homepage is all scrambled...although once past the homepage, everything appears normal.

What the hell?

I thought about that...shockingly, it booted normally today. The fan works fine, and I don't remember hearing anything alarming prior to today.

Nothing unusual comes up in error check.

For defragmentation, I ran an analysis, and it suggested a defrag. I'm running that now, it's up to one percent...this is going to take awhile.

There are four tabs at the top: file, action, view and help. Just below that, a set of symbols meaning back, forward,show/hide console tree, help, and show/hide action pane.

The main screen of the task manager lists the following: under the heading HOME-FUWOUJ6XFO there is
-computer
-disk drives
-display adaptors
-dvd/cd-rom drives
-floppy disc controllers
-floppy disc drives
-human interface devices
-IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
-IEEE 1394 bus host controllers
-keyboards
-mice and other pointing devices
-monitors
-network adaptors
-ports (COM & LPT)
-processors
-sound, video and game controllers
-system devices
-universal serial bus controllers

There's no performance tab either.

The device manager brings up no yellow exclamation marks. But there doesn't appear to be a "processes" tab precisely.

Virus scan turned up empty. I also had the same problem when I booted up today, although different. The computer turned on, the windows screen appeared, and then the screen went dark (and the corresponding green light went orange, perhaps indicating an interuption in the power supply) before starting over and booting properly.

Although...I typically have my desktop running for 12-13 hour intervals without a power interruption, so maybe not...

No responses?

So soon after I almost lost my laptop, my desktop almost goes. When I booted, the screen initially wouldn't turn on. The light turned green, then orange, then after a long wait, green again, before I was told that Windows did not boot. Rebooted, got the same result...until I booted in safe mode. Petrified that I was going to lose all information I immediately went about transferring my files to my backup. When I finally rebooted with no problems, I found that one of the folders had mysteriously been copied onto my desktop. Good ****ing grief.

Was this some stupid windows glitch, or was I the target of a malicious attack?

I agree and disagree...true, not everybody is a hardcore gamer, and motion technology taps into that market. But to say its merely progression is to imply that the controller will one day be as defunct as VHS. Which is highly unlikely to occur even if we, as gamers, suddenly lost our hands in a freaky big collective combine accident.

The Batman fan films, with that Koenig guy as Joker.