Firefox and .mov ?

[Tenex]

Every time I open a .mov in Firefox I get the sound but nothing but a black screen - any idea why or how to correct it?

I accidentally found that if I keep clicking the mouse over the window the movie shows so it's there somewhere!

[Chris Locke]

Have you got VLC installed? Apparently this has a plugin for Firefox which Firefox isn't too happy about. You could try removing / disabling that plugin, or using another one. Viewing the .mov in VLC directly should work OK though.

[Tenex]

Ah that could be it, not sure if the plug-in is selected but I'll try it out. Thanks again Chris.

BTW do you remember the fun I was having with my Shuttle before Xmas with the random reboots etc? Well after a second (or third??) set of problems I left it for 48 hours while I fumed and then lo and behold after trying it it switched on and ran solidly 24/7 for 10+ days!

I'm nowhere on getting the problem solved but I have bought another copy of XP to build the other Shuttle that's in pieces. So I wondered if it would be OK to take the primary HDD out of this and put it in the new build and install XP Pro over the exisitng XP installation? The HDD is partitioned and I assume I wouldn't lose data on a fresh install? Certainly can't back up all the data as it's too much and the external HDD is full too.

I'll then use the secondary HDD instead and reinstall XP Home on that for the problem Shuttle. What do you think?

[Chris Locke]

If its a different motherboard / onboard kit, then it will need a fresh reinstall, as XP won't be able to cope with the driver changes, etc. You'd have to reinstall all your programs, and if you didn't format, the original directories would already be there, etc - it could get very messy.
The only easy way around it, is to have two partitions on the hard disk. Say, 20GB for Windows, and the rest for data. You can then wipe the OS partition, with all your data intact. You'd still have to reinstall all your programs, but again, your data would be safe.

Hope that makes sense...

[Tenex]

Yes thanks that's what I was hoping - different mobo, AMD, etc. It's a pain re-installing but the data is the important thing.

[Chris Locke]

Indeed, but once its set up, you can Ghost it so you don't have to reinstall from scratch each time (albeit on the same hardware). Most people recommend reinstalling every now and then anyway, to clean out the rubbish and make the machine run smoothly again.

[Tenex]

I have Ghost so will definitely do that, but I've never really understood how it works because if you have to produce a backup then surely all the crap is backed up too?

A MS "expert" (employee) once told me he used Ghost and wiped the opsys partition every 3 months or so. Showed a lot of confidence in the product he was supporting :)

[Chris Locke]

If you Ghost the system after a fresh install, you can use that as a baseline. Its handy to do a Ghost every month or so as a backup, for example, if your hard drive dies, you can go back to a working system in minutes. If you want to go back to a 'clean' (crap free) system, you go all the way back to the baseline image, and start again.
You still need to do data backups though - eg, of emails, etc, but this helps maintain a system backup.