If you have questions, right now, about computers whether it be a software or hardware question, we currently recommend trying other alternatives. PCTalk.info used to maintain a chat room that was open 24 hours a day but, since our Chat Server Host folded, we have been without a chat presence. Please be sure you carefully read the Chatroom Procedures and Guidelines that are posted below before entering into chat.

If you already have an IRC client that you prefer, the following are good places to visit:
1) PCTalk - Sorry, our IRC server is now down indefinitely. :-(

2) PhantmzChat: irc.phantmzchat.com, ports 6667; channel #PhantmzChat - Good place to go for general chat.

3) PhaseNet: irc.PhazeNet.net, ports 6667; channel #Links - Good place to go for general chat and information on New Zealand.

4) DixieSys: irc.dixiesys.net, ports 6667; channel #Privacy - Good place to go if you have virus, trojan, or hijack problems.

Thank you for visiting, and happy computing!

Required Chatroom Procedures:

1.) All chat must stop when a new user comes in and asks for help. Chat must remain stopped until either user has been helped or someone specific is actively helping said user and the user understands who is helping.

There are a few simple guidelines to follow for this chat room:

1.) No excessive swearing.

2.) If you have a question, please do not send anyone a private message without asking first. Ask the question in the channel so that everyone can help you with it.

3.) Harassment, flaming, or general rudeness will not be tolerated. This includes choosing an offensive nick to use in this chatroom.

4.) There will be no advertising (spamming).

5.) Do not paste long pieces of text into this chat room without permission. There are unattended (usually) robots that monitor the channel and a large paste (over 4 lines of text) could be interpreted as a flood attack.

6.) Use of scripts that annoy or unnecessarily add text to the room is usually considered flooding.

7.) Please do not change your nick once in the room other than to add "away", "food", "afk" or similar short add-ons to your current nickname. Excessive name changes are not desireable as it may be hard to keep track of who is who.

8.) Failure to follow these guidelines may result in your removal from the chatroom.

Please be aware that these conversations ARE logged. Do not reveal information that is confidential in the main channel. Click on the session button and put a check mark in the box that says "show private messages" and the one that says "float new windows" if you need to keep something confidential. Then select the person you wish to speak to privately (after asking them if it is alright to do so) and use this command:
/query (nickname) (your message).

You only need to do that once. A window should popup for the private chat.

Don't close the browser window if using a Java applet. Doing so will close the applet that lets you into the chatroom.

When you want to leave a Java chatroom, type the following command:
/quit

It should not be necessary, but may be desireable, to close all browser windows for a few seconds. Leaving any browser window open may keep the connection active and, if so, you will still be connected to the server.

There may be one or more IP addresses that have been banned from the chat room for various reasons. If you get a message that your address has been banned and it was not you that was banned, please contact us and we can arrange for you to circumvent the ban or temporarily remove the ban.

Visit the mIRC Web Site to Download mIRC if you don't have it.
Visit our detailed setup page if you want to know some basic setup information for mIRC.