Computer Ramblings

So for the first time in many many years I experienced a hardware failure! well technically my GF did, her DVD burner stopped working. would not read any discs. so that was diagnosed and is being replaced, then she mentioned there were linux issues, so i installed the latest ubuntu (8.1) and that was all good and gravy.....then! the windows boot.ini was broken! oh noes! so i had to determine wtf happened there and thankgoodess for the dualboot, i was able to boot to linux and discern that for some reason windows had placed extra copies of its boot files on the spare storage drive (old PATA 80GB). why it did this? i don't know. so i formatted that to fat32 so it would share nicely with linux for extra storage between the 2 OS's and then set about to fix the boot.ini, it was just pointing at the wrong drive was all.

any fun computing adventures you'd like to share? i'm currently trying to figure out if i should give her one of my spare 7800GTX's i have laying around (will her psu be able to power it? who knows) and devise a way to keep her system from clogging with dust. in less than a year in her room the heatsink was nearly choked and the vid card was about to die from lack of airflow. it was like dust bunny city!

This thread has turned into one about my latest PC build!

Not seeking any help as its already built and running, though input is always welcome.

Lets start with the heart, the PSU.

Newegg.com - OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS 600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Active PFC Power Supply - Power Supplies

its a PSU, it does what its supposed to and isn't gaudy. It's quiet and seems to have enough juice for my rig.

Now onto the Case

Newegg.com - Rosewill R604-P SL 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case,with mesh air filters,adjustable vents & Tool-Free kits - Computer Cases

I like it for the most part. the tool-less works very well. The flip-out 5.25" bay covers work and are 'neat', no blinking DVDROM lights and it keeps a little of the noise of the drive in the case. I like the finish of the case, its looks nice, like with the other Rosewill case I am very happy overall. One thing I do not like is that there is NO room between the HDD cage and front fan position, this results in little airflow past the drives and more noise.

The CPU

Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Good value! under $100 and it performs well, runs very cool, has enough balls to do most HTPC operations and play games. I hear it overclocks very well, I have not messed with that much as I'm using the Intel heatsink and fan and thermal pad.

The Board

Newegg.com - ASUS P5QL-CM LGA 775 Intel G43 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

LOTS of bells and whistles! Expressgate is cool I guess...but I have not used it once, I have my SATA drive in ACHI mode which Expressgate is NOT compatible with, the drive needs to be set to IDE mode. There are ways to install Expressgate (slashtop) to a USB drive, but I don't really care enough to mess with it. The board has onboard DVI and VGA AND a Displayport. The onboard DVI is pretty nice if you're tossing together a cheap home office PC or PC for someone who has an LCD but does not game. Par for the course, onboard video is very weak but 110% adequate for desktop tasks. The onboard sound is good, but if you want SPDIF you need to purchase that separately.

The RAM

Newegg.com - CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Not the EXACT same ram, mine is C5 version. It runs cold at 1.8 volts and is auto configured, it does what it needs to do fine. Not even running it at 1066 speed so I can't really tell you if its any good.

The Video Card

Newegg.com - SPARKLE SFPX94GT1024U2 GeForce 9400 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

I got this for $35 with free shipping on sale from Newegg as one of their daily specials. Good card for that price. with the above PC with NO overclocking I got 3329 in 3DMark06. With the above card at 675/475 I get 3956 with no artifacting. IMO for what I paid its a great video card. I have a 120mm case fan blowing in through the side of the case panel onto the board and northbridge and the card as well, temps are 40c ish at idle and under 60c at full load in a 73F room.

The Hard Drive

Just a 400GB thats nothing special that I moved from another machine.

The DVD Burner

Same as the HDD, moved from another machjine, nothing special.

So for the first time in many many years I experienced a hardware failure! well technically my GF did, her DVD burner stopped working. would not read any discs. so that was diagnosed and is being replaced, then she mentioned there were linux issues, so i installed the latest ubuntu (8.1) and that was all good and gravy.....then! the windows boot.ini was broken! oh noes! so i had to determine wtf happened there and thankgoodess for the dualboot, i was able to boot to linux and discern that for some reason windows had placed extra copies of its boot files on the spare storage drive (old PATA 80GB). why it did this? i don't know. so i formatted that to fat32 so it would share nicely with linux for extra storage between the 2 OS's and then set about to fix the boot.ini, it was just pointing at the wrong drive was all.

 

any fun computing adventures you'd like to share? i'm currently trying to figure out if i should give her one of my spare 7800GTX's i have laying around (will her psu be able to power it? who knows) and devise a way to keep her system from clogging with dust. in less than a year in her room the heatsink was nearly choked and the vid card was about to die from lack of airflow. it was like dust bunny city!

I wanted to get some lyrics for a song and it asked me if I wanted to download a music program - I said yes.

Now whenever I close a window - it locks up. Also some windows won't open any more.

I can minimize the windows and no problem.

I can also use the control/alt/delete and close internext explorer, which closes all the windows, then I have to open the ones I want again.

Any idea on how I fix this??

a few options....

1. use firefox from now on, its a little more secure than IE

2. try using AVG free anti-virus, its pretty darn good and its free

3. migrate yourself to linux and use that for internet browsing, its virus proof/malware/spyware proof. if you just browse internet and type documents then it'll do that just fine. if you need programs that are specific to MS windows then don't use it. Ubuntu is a good distribution and is very very easy to use. you can install it without changing anything on your computer to try it out.

I tried downloading the free anti-virus and it kept locking up on me.

It detected 138 bad files and then went to a site that required a fee.

I think the "free" part is just to get me to the "pay" point.

Try to uninstall the music program by going to START / Settings / Control Panel / Add or Remove Programs....might be a slightly different sequence depending on your OS.

Reboot after uninstall.

I also found a great free disk cleaning product.... http://www.ccleaner.com/

Jay in MA

I tried downloading the free anti-virus and it kept locking up on me.It detected 138 bad files and then went to a site that required a fee.

 

I think the "free" part is just to get me to the "pay" point.

I use the AVG Free and it works great.

Had some bad expereinces with Norton and McAfee. Although I just read that Norton is very good now it bogged the system down really bad when I had it installed. Both McAfee and Norton were a bear to remove.

Has anybody installed CCleaner yet? Made a big difference in performance on my system.

I tried downloading the free anti-virus and it kept locking up on me.It detected 138 bad files and then went to a site that required a fee.

 

I think the "free" part is just to get me to the "pay" point.

http://free.avg.com/download?prd=afe click the dark blue area, install that.

 

yes, i've used CCleaner, it is good if you know what you're doing. jv16pt is also good as well as jkdefrag.

Re: Windows -- Once your system is infected with any sort of virus, spyware, or malware, about the only reliable way to cure the problem is to reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows. There is literally no way to surgically repair a virus infected hard drive. Do the re-install. You do have a Windows installation CD, I hope.

Re: Linux -- I went to Ubuntu in 2006, now running the latest version, which I believe is 8.4. It is fabulous. Never had any virus, spyware, or malware issues with it. I also got a 20" iMac in '07, and it has been my main computer. It is also almost totally immune to the viruses and other garbage which plague Windows. In fact, I consider Windows to be largely useless for home users just for that reason. Only thing about Linux is that it's sort of difficult to find printer drivers for it, but there's a lot of help out there on the linux forums. Always check there for driver availability before you purchase a printer.

she might be able to snag the DVD drive tomorrow from work (works at UPS) :woot: so i can throw it in and get it back to her before the weekend hits. i'm going to install XBMC on her linux side so i can just plug hers into the TV when its here again and use it as a lil HTPC

fish, i have a bunch of old old hardware here, i have a put together system thats an Athlon classic 700mhz (yes, slot A!) with a Geforce 3, an old-ish dell (2.6 P4), and some Pentium 2 stuff floating around still, and a P3 866 and its board also floating around, but not housed. I've been meaning to put together another machine to fill the case that the Athlon is in currently, but just havent pulled the trigger on the parts. it'll be another intel dual core machine, as i have the ram, dvd drive, video card, case, but need board, cpu, psu, and some hdd's.

you might be able to flash a different bios into that HP's board and unlock some of the adjustments.

my main 'rig' is a little beast of a machine, nothing too impressive but it does enough for me.

E8400 (45nm) 3Ghz at 3.6 air cooled, a nice 1600Mhz FSB which puts my ram right at 1066 with a 5:3 divider

4GB 1066 DDR2

9800GT

2 Raid 0 arrays, one at 600GB and the other at 240GB and a single drive, the usual dvd burner too.

the board is a little older, an Abit IN932X MAX which has all the onboard goodies like dual gigabit. the NVRAID is actually darn nice on the PCI-e bus, having previously ran raid arrays on a PCI bus i was limited by the bus speed and would peak at its maximum. now i'm literally seeing transfers that are 2x the drives speed. its very nice when playing a game and the loading bar just zips right across the screen, or moving files around, uncompressing large files, encoding/decoding, etc.

what'd you do with the E2180? i'd be willing to take it off your hands for a fair price i'll toss it into my GF's box, shes got a 2140 right now (1.6).

yes, its a decent OC on the E8400, my board is a little older so it won't go higher with stability. a newer board would get me faster but i don't need it right now really. heres the cooler i'm using, its pretty good!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16835233003 well mine is the old version without the backplate, i'm ordering that soon and installing it. those clips are the devil!

i'm thinking of updating to the new version and using my old one to cool the new htpc build since its real quiet.

also her PC case which i've fallen in love with and am ordering another of for another build..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811147056 its cheap and VERY high quality. i posted a review of it.

Pros: Great Case, have had one for just over a year now. the CPU duct works PERFECT to allow the stock Intel cooler draw in cooler air from outside of the case while the filter does an adequate job of removing most fur/hair from air entering without reducing airflow. Fan placement throughout the case is well laid out with places to put fans to blow over the hard drive rack. the large and nearly silent rear fan moves enough air through the case, however it would be nice to see a better grill over it, maybe a finer perforation to allow more airflow?

The hard drive bays are great and allow very easy access to the drives, but be ware that a 90 degree SATA cable will make your life alot easier when connecting to drives! A regular straight cable may not bend enough to get past the case side cover.

The tool-less feature is nice, the drives snap into place very firmly and do not move around at all, however its a good idea to secure the optical drive with a - continue below

Cons: Only one real problem thus far, the plastic with the tool-less snap rails for the 3.5" drive have become brittle with heat/time. This may be accelerated as this PC resides in a pretty warm room (80-90F!), however when removing the front case cover to replace a bad DVD burner one of the rails for the 3.5" drive was broken, the bent part that one would squeeze broke at some point and fell out with the removal of the front panel, the other side feels as if its about to break as well. Not an issue really, as the front cover will retain the drive from pulling out, just a note to anyone who keeps cases for a long period of time. I wonder if I could trim a 5.25 metal rail to fit the 3.5" drive?

Other Thoughts: However it is a good idea to secure the optical drive with a screw on either side to prevent vibration when the drive spins up a disc.

Overall this is the best bang-for-the-buck case I've ever bought! I tend to hang onto cases for decades and this one seems like its a survivor for the most part (as long as I don't loose all those tool-less rails!)

wow, fireballs...that brings back memories. i have a Qauntum Bigfoot drive that still works. 5.25" single platter the size of a CDROM. i think its a whopping 7GB drive. i could kill a man with that thing, its big hunk of metal! let me know if you do want to get rid of that CPU.

and yea, the case is excellent. one of the best cases i've used, right next to me Coolermaster Stacker 810.

http://www.coolermaster.com/products/produ...etail&id=13

its got insane drive space! i have 6 HDD's and an optical and its not even close to crowded. as for PSU i'm using a toughpower 750W unit, its nice. i have some old ATX psu's which are nearing 15yrs old and still work....and theyre the cheapy OEM ones that come with dell's/Gateway/hp/etc.

well i just put in a newegg order for a case, psu, and cpu to make another machine here.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817341010

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811147059 (almost identical to the other case, which is out of stock)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819116072

i have on hand the video card, ram, and optical drive. i'll grab a hard drive for it and motherboard next week once i pick what i want.

My computer is a piece of junk.

It will lock up if I close any window.

I can use the control/alt/delete and then stop running internet explorer and it closes out all open windows.

Then I have to open them again if I want to use them.

I can minimize the windows and it works fine.

It all started when I downloaded a music/lyric file.

Then I tried to delete it and downloaded a virus checker.

Now the virus checker always comes up on start-up and has to be closed out.

I need to do a clean-up on programs/files that don't work.

format and reinstall windows, you oughta have a recovery CD that came with the computer or a recovery partition and a keypress at startup will access it.

format and reinstall windows, you oughta have a recovery CD that came with the computer or a recovery partition and a keypress at startup will access it.

I don't know if I have the installation disc, but if I do, will it un-install and then re-install?

yes you'll loose everything and it'll go back to how you had it when you first turned it on. if you don't have the disc theres websites online that sell them for specific computers.

you might be able to backup important photos and documents onto an external drive.

I have way too many pictures and files to lose.

It is easier to just live with the computer the way it is.

It still works, but not like it should.

just get an external drive and back them up, what do you think will happen to them if the hard drive should up and fail? they'd be just as gone you know! always always always backup important things, its like not having home owners insurance!!!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820227333 $15 after rebate, 16GB's of storage thats stable for decades and nearly failure proof. i doubt you have more that 16GB's worth of pictures/documents you want to save? plug it in, drag and drop it all to the memory stick, re-do the PC, plug the memory stick back in, and drag and drop it all back.

then install avgfree and the avg toolbar and use fire-fox and don't run suspicious programs!

darnit, case came broken. contacted rosewill and they'll try to locate and send me out a new front panel. thankfully the fronts are pretty interchangable between their case models so if my one isnt instock i'll let them know that i'll take another one.

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/huz.../DSC04354-1.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/huz...er/DSC04354.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/huz...er/DSC04352.jpg

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/huz...er/DSC04364.jpg

just tossed in the OCZ stealthstream 600W unit, its pretty hefty in the hands and smells like new computer. installed the front 120mm to keep the hard drives cool, need to order the rest of the stuff and wait on the front panel now.