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Computer help needed!

  
  

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Shiny: Well Over Thirty
15:49 / 14.11.07
Hmmm, it would seem my graphics card is actually a Nvidia FX 5900 XT. Sorry for the confusion. This perhaps illustrates why I need halp when it comes to hardware.......
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
05:58 / 15.11.07
Oh, missed the power supply question yesterday, and the answer is I'm afraid I don't know, not do I know how to figure it out really, being a tech-dunce. It's a single big black, meaty looking cable a bit chunkier than a normal power cable, but as to it's technical specifications I'm not sure.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:13 / 15.11.07
I assume this is Windows? If so, I think siw.exe can show you your component list, including power supply. It's probably written on the PSU itself, of course. If you can ruun a 5900 it's probably 300W or above, which will run a 7 series, assuming you don't have anything else drawing too much power, like an overclocking cooling system...
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
08:47 / 15.11.07
Yes, it's on Windows XP. I'm not overclocking anything and indeed wouldn't know how - my cooling system is fairly chunky at least compared to those I've seen on the desk PCs at work, but it's just what came as standard with the system, rather than being a custom jobbie. I'll try to establish what the power supply is tonight - many thanks for the help in any case - the 7 series does look like about what I'm looking for, and available at prices that leave me a little bit of money for either yet more memory or a slightly better CPU if I can find one.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
15:34 / 16.11.07
Having just gone throught the utterly terrifying experience of adding my new memory, I managed to get a look inside my computer to check out the power source - turns out it's only 230v. And even though it seems everythinh went just dandy, I'm now quite scared of opening my computer again. I was convinced when I turned it back on I'd find I'd destroyed the thing. I suppose I'll still upgrade my card - but gee hardware scares me!
 
 
luminocity
15:56 / 16.11.07
You might be more interested in the power output (in watts) than the input voltage? Alternatively, I might have misunderstood your concern.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
16:01 / 16.11.07
Ah. Meant watts. I have a worrying tendancy to confuse the two. I suspect everything I'm saying in this thread is illustrating why at my level of skill it's no bad thing that I'm petrified of hardware.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
14:14 / 21.11.07
Hmmmm. On further reflection it's becoming clear that in order to have any certainty that a graphics card any better than the one I have now is going to require upgrading my power supply. The internet in fact tells me that my current graphics card possibly shouldn't really run with my current powere supply. Now the thought of doing that sort of surgery on my PC scares me more than any of the other jobs I've done or contemplated doing. So I'm wondering if now might be a good time to get a whole new PC, provided I can persuade the bank to lend me the money.

That being the case I'm thinking what I want for reasonable future proofing, without going completely insane, is a system based around an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66ghz CPU, 4gb memory and a 512MB Geforce 8800GT graphics card. I've seen a couple of places, most notably pcspecialist and DinoPC, which seem to offer that sort of set-up for about £1300, but I've heard some unpleasant things about some of them, especially pcspecialist, so if an leather clad heroes are aware of any good places to buy computers in the UK, or have any suggestions as to things that might be wrong with the system I'm thinking of getting, or other important things I should be taking into account then please let me know.
 
 
Janean Patience
11:24 / 22.11.07
My thanks to leather-clad brutish-yet-tech-savvy hero Haus, who posted a couple of pages back with an exhaustive list of options for me to get data from an old PC to a new one. Despite him posting it mere minutes after my post, I hadn't seen it until today. Oddly I didn't need to. The option I set off to explore was returning my broken Creative Zen mp3 player to active service because I knew it was compatible with the old PC and could store data. I'd abandoned it a few months ago because it was so broken that nothing appeared on the display but a few jagged lines, but steeled myself to go through the full diagnostic procedure before throwing it in the bin and buying a memory pen instead.

What a joy, then, when I plugged it in and it worked. Just worked fine with my full music library on there and everything. And having magically healed itself it's transferred all the files I needed and everything's well, all manner of things are well. So to anyone needing help, try leaving the broken thing in a drawer for a few months and just hoping it'll turn out alright. It worked for me.
 
 
luminocity
12:14 / 22.11.07
Shiny Spaceknight, now is an excellent time to learn how to put a computer together. It really is very easy - the hard bits are handling a screwdriver without stabbing yourself, and remembering not to wear wool.
You seem to already have a decent idea of what should go inside the box. There's any amount of help on the internets too.
The gain is that you get exactly the components you want, at a cheap price. It (usually) works out considerably cheaper than a branded machine. Maybe there are things you can reuse, like the case, hard disks, monitor?
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
08:46 / 25.11.07
Hmmmm, not sure I'm up for building it myself - I'm sure it's not that hard, and I suspect if I knew someone in meatspace who could show me how to do it the first time I'd be able to do it myself in the future, but I'd bloody intimidating trying to build a PC when one's only read written instructions. Also I don't really want to salvage bits from my current PC as I have someone earmarked to give it to when I get my new one. So I think I'm going to get it built by professionals - probably Cougar - they seem very cheap, and unlike the other reasonably priced places I've found they have remarkably good reviews everywhere I've found online.

Relating to that I've a couple of questions - firstly it looks like that if I cut the amount I spend on some of the other options like the monitor and perhaps have a graphics card a bit lower down in the Nvidia 8800 family I can probably afford a system based around a really powerful Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6850 3.0 Ghz CPU, and I'm thinking it might be a sensible decision to get the really powerful CPU and upgrade the graphics card and screen later, since the CPU is the most expensive bit and I'm more willing to expend money on a Graphics card and screen that I'm going to want to upgrade later than a CPU. Does this sound like a good idea?

Secondly I'm hearing online that some people swear by one really fast small hard disc drive for their operating system, and another larger one for storage. Is the gain in performance for this likely to be worthwhile, or if one is working to a budget is it a good idea to put the money into somethign else?
 
 
luminocity
23:12 / 25.11.07
To both your questions, it really depends what you want to use the machine for. A professional company should be happy to discuss it with you and explain the pros and cons of each alternative, and would do so much better than myself.
 
 
Bamba
11:06 / 26.11.07
Relating to that I've a couple of questions - firstly it looks like that if I cut the amount I spend on some of the other options like the monitor and perhaps have a graphics card a bit lower down in the Nvidia 8800 family I can probably afford a system based around a really powerful Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6850 3.0 Ghz CPU, and I'm thinking it might be a sensible decision to get the really powerful CPU and upgrade the graphics card and screen later, since the CPU is the most expensive bit and I'm more willing to expend money on a Graphics card and screen that I'm going to want to upgrade later than a CPU. Does this sound like a good idea?


Um, sort of, maybe. Going for a decent CPU initially is definitely a good idea simply because upgrading the CPU later on down the line will almost certainly mean also upgrading the motherboard and all the RAM i.e. you really want to avoid it. However, in terms of performance in games I've found that the CPU is rarely the massive bottleneck you might expect. Prior to my last upgrade I was running games that my shitty 1Ghz CPU should technically never have been able to manage according to the system requirements, but because my gfx card was upgraded more often the latest games were still mine to play. And outside gaming you'll rarely push the CPU enough to make it even break a sweat so it's not a big deal. What I'm saying is that getting a half-decent processor and good graphics card will ward of an upgrade longer than a turbo nutter CPU and shitty gfx card combo. However you work it, you're likely going to end up wanting to upgrade the gfx card the most often out of all the components in my opinion so go into this with that in mind.


Secondly I'm hearing online that some people swear by one really fast small hard disc drive for their operating system, and another larger one for storage. Is the gain in performance for this likely to be worthwhile, or if one is working to a budget is it a good idea to put the money into somethign else?


I'm not sure if there's actually a decent enough bump in performance under that scheme (I'm not saying there isn't, I'm genuinely saying I don't know), but there is another incredibly good reason for going with the setup: if Windows craps out on you all your files are safe. I've got my precious files on a separate drive and it's saved my a lot of heartache in the last few years as Windows has died on me completely a couple of times. Had I not separated things onto separate physical drive I'd have been screwed, as it is I just reinstalled Windows on the C drive then booted up to find all my stuff happily sitting on my D drive as it had been before. And given the incredible cheapness of hard drive space these days there really isn't even a financial incentive not to do this; it's a total no-brainer in my opinion.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
15:54 / 26.11.07
Thanks for your advice. I've come up a shortlist of 3 systems I'm thinking of getting as shown below;

1
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz 8Mb Cach, 4Gb Corsair Memory DDR2 800 - 4 x 1GB, 74Gb raptor drive 10000rpm sata, 500GB Secondary SATA HDD, Impress Case , Atrix 800Watt Silent Dual Fan , 768Mb 8800GTX Nvidia DDR DVI ULTRA BFG, QC - ASUS P5N-ESLI 1333fsb-DDR800x4 SLI motherboard (Dual graphics), Samsung DVD +/- Re-writer, No Floppy Disk Drive, 22 inch Video 7 TFT 5ms widescreen D22W11, Keyboard & Mouse Set Black and Silver, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 PCI 7.1, Trust SP-6210 Speakers, , Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premiem (OEM), MS Works 8 oem, , 13 Month Warranty, Free Carriage

2
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0 GHz 4Mb Cache, 4Gb Corsair Memory DDR2 800 - 4 x 1GB, 74Gb raptor drive 10000rpm sata, 500GB Secondary SATA HDD, Impress Case , Atrix 800Watt Silent Dual Fan , 768Mb 8800GTX Nvidia DDR DVI ULTRA BFG, QC - ASUS P5N-ESLI 1333fsb-DDR800x4 SLI motherboard (Dual graphics), Samsung DVD +/- Re-writer, No Floppy Disk Drive, 22 inch Video 7 TFT 5ms widescreen D22W11, Keyboard & Mouse Set Black and Silver, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 PCI 7.1, Trust SP-6210 Speakers, , Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premiem (OEM), MS Works 8 oem, , 13 Month Warranty, Free Carriage

3
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6850 3.0 Ghz 8Mb Cach, 4GB Kingston DDR2 667 - 4 x 1GB single modules, 80GB SATA Hard Drive, 200GB Secondary SATA HDD, Impress Case , Atrix 800Watt Silent Dual Fan , 768Mb Nvidia 8800GTX graphics card DX10, QC - ASUS P5N-ESLI 1333fsb-DDR800x4 SLI motherboard (Dual graphics), Samsung DVD +/- Re-writer, No Floppy Disk Drive, 19 Inch YURAKU TFT Monitor MA9BBK, Keyboard & Mouse Set Black and Silver, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 PCI 7.1, Trust SP-6210 Speakers, , Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premiem (OEM), MS Works 8 oem, , 13 Month Warranty, Free Carriage

The first two are indentical except for the 2nd one having a faster but only duel core E6850 instead of the Q6600 chip. The last one goes for the QX6850 chip, but economizes on the graphics card, memory speed, size and speed of hard disc drives and has a smaller screen, to keep within my budget, which I'm not really all that comfortable with doing. I'm inclined to go for the first more balanced system, but the only thing that really puts me off the first configuration is that I'm currently using a 2Ghz Athlon 64 based machine, and I'm not really sure whether the Q6600 is all that more powerful than that chip when playing single threaded games.

As well as being able to play the recent generation of incredible looking games such as Crysis at reasonable settings, I'm also keen on having as much future proofing as is ever really possible with a quality gaming system (which I realize isn't all that much). This is why I'm keener on the Quad Core chips, despite very few games actually using Quad Core at the moment. I'd like whatever system I go for would be one that I'm not going to have to upgrade for at least 18 months, and not completely replace for hopefully 3-4 years.

I've emailed the 3 sets of specs to the people I'm buying it from and am awaiting advice from them, but I'd also be glad to hear any advice lithers might have on the possible pro's and con's of these systems, especially since lithers aren't selling me anything.
 
 
pony
04:20 / 01.12.07
my significant other just got a new computer which was supposed to have vista preloaded. we tried to do the initial start up, and were shown the message "please wait a moment while windows prepares to start for the first time" for several hours. we left it alone for a while, and it didn't change at all.

we finally gave up and turned it off and the back on, after which we got a "window boot manager" message stating that windows couldn't start because "Windows\System32\winload.exe is corrupt or missing" (error 0xc000000f). the computer suggested we restart with the windows installation disk, which for some reason the company (Acer) doesn't think it's necessary to ship with computers these days.

Acer's support department is closed for the weekend, and from what I can glean from their website it looks like we'll have to ship the computer back to the company for repairs. It seems like there should be some easier solution to our problem, but the web is not helping me. If anyone has any suggestions for getting things up and running without the installation disk so Zoe can play warcraft on her new computer, we'd be infinitely grateful.
 
 
Lama glama
18:46 / 09.12.07
I just got the Orange Box for my new(ish) up to spec PC. After the Steam installation debacle, the games are gradually updating themselves. Everything seems to be going fine, but when I try to play Half Life 2, it won't let me play it in offline mode, refusing to start the Steam client. I have a dial-up connection so it's pretty unfeasible to leave the connection running while I play HL2.

Anybody have any helpful suggestions?
 
 
Essential Dazzler
00:55 / 11.12.07
HELLO!

Does anyone know of a free DVD-copying program that will ignore region encoding?

I've been using DVD shrink and didn't know that it had trouble with Regions, I really don't want to go changing my settings unless it's really necessary.

THANKS!
 
 
Saint Keggers
00:58 / 11.12.07
Llama: If Im not mistaken the reason you cant play in offline mode is that it hasnt completely finished downloading all the updates to your computer. So once they're complete you should be alright.
 
 
Lama glama
17:07 / 11.12.07
Excellent. Thanks for the tip, Veng.
 
 
illmatic
07:53 / 17.12.07
What processes do most people use for backing up their PCs? I really need to do mine (and get into the habit of doing it regularly). I have all of My Documents saved on a disc bar the music but I can't currently back up everything else using the process recommended by Windows because I need to install something off the original Windows disc which I can't find.

Are there any other programmes that people use which are easily downloadable? And anything else vital that I need to know about backing up?
 
 
Cailín
19:47 / 18.12.07
What do you want to accomplish with your backup - safe storage of key files, or the ability to restore your whole machine in the event of failure? What sort of media are you going to use to backup onto (you said disc, but I can't figure out if you mean hard disc or CD)? Do you want to retain multiple historical backups, or maintain a single ongoing backup of the most current status of your files? Answers to these questions will help figure out which software will work for you.
 
 
The Natural Way
15:42 / 26.12.07
Computer people!

My mum has asked me to remove extraneous software from her machine, which is fine except that she insists on running the godawful shit men know as AOL. Can any of you guys tell me whether I can safely remove the two earlier versions that are crouched in their filth on her hardrive?
 
 
The Natural Way
15:44 / 26.12.07
Oh, and it's Boboss, by the way.

I better log out and in
 
 
Spaniel
16:00 / 26.12.07
That's better
 
 
Pingle!Pop
13:13 / 27.12.07
I listen to pretty much all my music on the 'pute, but until now it's been through a rubbish little pair of speakers, so I asked for a proper set for Xmas. I received a "5.1"-style system, which seems to require three sockets, and I've checked round the back of the 'pute and it only has one, on the motherboard. What's my best bet? There are a load of USB things on eBay which sounds a lot less stressful than anything which involves taking things apart, but is that a bad idea? Is there any difference in these things if they're used for listening to CDs and mp3s?
 
 
petunia
16:12 / 07.01.08
My fiancée has pc woes.. Windows got crudded up so she has had to reinstall, but there is a problem with the partition naming.

She has a single hardrive with two partitions. One was originally the harddrive and the other we called 'X' and mapped to (X: ).

For some reason, in the blue installation screens of windows, Windows decided it wanted 'X' to be mapped to (C: ). Though we installed the system onto the original space that has now become (D: ), we cannot get windows to swap stuff around.

I have tried the disk management util in admin, but it will not allow remapping of boot or system drives. Oddly, it classes (D: ) as the boot drive, but (C: ) as the system drive, even tho Windows is installed to (D: ).

For general ease of future installation stuff and lack of headfucky, we'd like to get the system drive mapped to (C: ) and the backup/music/etc drive ('X') mapped to (X: ). Or maybe we'll map (X: ) to (Q: ) or something. We're crazy like that...

A quick google suggests the only route is a full disk wipe and reinstallation, which is do-able but would be a big bloody arse.

Does anyone know what's going on and how we can fix it?
 
 
jamesPD
12:16 / 10.01.08
Anyone know how to make explorer in Windows XP always open folders in 'View Details' mode, so that you always get vertical lists of files and folders with their size and modified time-stamp, rather than a bunch of ugly great icons?

I know there's a setting somewhere, but I can't find it.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:23 / 10.01.08
Start Menu - Programs - Windows Explorer - View - Details, I think.
 
 
Pingle!Pop
12:51 / 10.01.08
... And then from the menus, Tools --> Folder Options --> View and there should be an option there to make it default. Though I've a feeling I've seen this reverse itself.
 
 
jamesPD
13:05 / 10.01.08
Ah, yes, thanks Haus, I'd already been through the Folder Options, but hadn't seen the 'Remember each folder's view settings' and 'Apply to All Folders' button. As you say, it has a habit of undoing itself periodically, but many thanks anyway.
 
 
unbecoming
15:56 / 11.01.08
I was hoping somebody might be able to advise me on this problem:

My desktop PC would not turn on when i returned from holiday, when the on button is pushed there is no beep and the fans do not start. There is no activity at all.

I checked the obvious stuff like the wall socket, extension chord, power supply button at the back and the computer plug itself, but all seem fine.

Inside the base unit the motherboard has an LED which lights when the computer is plugged in, so I am assuming that power is reaching the motherboard. The connections from the power supply seem sound so i took the front off the case to inspect the power switch itself.

That seemed fine so i had a look at the power switch pins on the motherboard- i tried swapping the connector for the reset button with the one for the power switch to activate the computer and shorting the pins with a screwdriver but still no joy...

if anyone has any ideas i'd be very grateful, otherwise i'll just need take it to a shop and hope i don't need a new motherboard.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
01:17 / 25.01.08
Query: is there a way, with Vista, to disable the trackpad when (and only when) my wireless mouse is hooked up? I occasionally use the laptop without the mouse, just the trackpad, but if I'm at home I want to be able to mouse without accidentally knocking the trackpad and causing hilarity.
 
 
Tsuga
22:30 / 01.02.08
Well, this reply page sure looks weird, with text from the previous page blown up bold, and then regular type in faint backdrop below. It's below the preview window, and it starts at:
Folder Options --> View and there... etc. in bold and after "reverse itself." it goes to jamesPD's post.
Never seen that before.

Anyway, I mentioned earlier in this thread a problem with a non-existent dvd drive device that keeps reinstalling itself (in properties it says it's a scsi cdrom device). This is still going on, and I can't figure it out. I don't know that it is doing anything bad to my computer, but I just don't trust it to be benign, anything that keeps reinstalling itself is suspect to me. I can't find anything similar to this after searching, but I may not be using the right search terms, even though I've done quite a few combinations. So I thought I'd try again here, this one is really nagging at me.
Someone had asked if I used some software emulation program to mount an image of a dvd, and I'd have to say not to my knowledge.
 
 
pony
01:33 / 05.02.08
i need to find a webhost for an html project i need to do for school. i'm pretty much just looking for something free and with minimal advertisements on the page. any suggestions?

(also, i would be pretty stoked if the url could be closed to "www.mywebsite.net" than "www.FREEWEBHOSTING!!!1!!1.com/mywebsite.htm". that might be asking too much, though)
 
 
All Acting Regiment
12:03 / 18.02.08
Right. Last night I attempted to turn on my home PC, a Fujitsu desktop jobby. I'm having to write this from the library, because the home one isn't working. The CPU seems to be fine - it's making the normal working noises and the lights are on as normal. I don't know, though, because the monitor is just saying 'No signal' as it would when the CPU is off. Now. I've unplugged and replugged the power lines, I've disconnected and reconnected the monitor, and still the same business. Does this ring a bell with anyone? Do monitors sometimes just stop reading the signal?
 
  

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