ClareJonsson

There's an echo in here :D

Two of my fave quotes are from Dr Mccoy in the original Star Trek series, and they are: "He's dead Jim" - Numerous episodes and "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!" - Devil in the dark

I would recommend 2gb for Vista, especially if your motherboard supports dual channel. Microsoft say that 512 is the minimum amount of RAM Vista will run on, but in my experience this is not enough even for XP to run smoothly after all the service patches etc, so I would say that 1gb is the minimum for Vista and 2gb is ok. 3gb would be better but you couldn't use that configuration in dual channel mode. And don't bother with 4gb unless you are using Vista 64 bit as 32 bit Os's cannot address above about 3.6gb of ram.

Sorry I prefer Intel. I have had so many AMD CPU's die but intel's just go on and on. Probably due to inlel's thermal cutout diodes being better than AMD. In my experience, AMD's burn up (literally) taking your motherboard with it, while Intel's just slow down and stop.... And at the mo, Intel CPU's are faster. Get a quad core Intel I say!

If you have another PC that you can temporarily plug the drive into, it is possible to manually restore an earlier version of your registry from the System Volume Information folder. If this is an option I can give you detailed instructions on how to do this if you like?

Here's one you can use: http://www.berzerk.co.uk/box/BOX.zip And here's a demo: http://www.berzerk.co.uk/box/ TTFN, Clare.

No idea what I'm going as this year, but last year I went as a ghost, here's the pic: I'm the one in white on the right.

I use Pinnacle Studio 11 plus, unfortunatelly it isn't free. I know what you mean about Movie Maker though, it's awfull. If there was a good enough free one around, I would be using it.

She's not a boy who wants to become a girl, she just wants to be normal! In her present state she's not normal, and it's causing her a lot of distress. If it was possible for medical science to change her brain to male then that would be an easier solution, but we cannot do that. The only option available now is to change the physical characteristics to match that of the brain. Another thing to remember is, who she is sexually attracted to has nothing to do with it all. She may like men, she may like women, but what's that got to do with anything? After all, the average lesbian is a woman, she doesn't feel like she is a guy inside. So to sum up, sexual desire and gender are somewhat disconnected. Lets leave sexual preference out of this discussion shall we.

Don't even mention Panda antivirus, I'm not going to say the word that springs to mind as I am too much of a lady. I came across Panda (Once again) two days ago, the user had Panda installed but the licence had run out, so Panda decided to block port 80 preventing her from surfing the web. She didn't even want Panda anyway as she did not know what it was or how it got onto her system. But that's besides the point! Addition: Best free antivirus is Avast. Never use more than one antiviral software at the same time as they tend to clash and give you terrible system overheads. And for spyware detection and removal I would install all the of the following: Defender, Ad-Aware and Spybot.

This could be the old Windows update problem, Try turning off Windows updates and see if this has an effect. Apparently sometimes Win updated screws up and SVCHOST goes into a loop taking up to 99% of your CPU. It will eventually give up but it takes over 5 mins sometimes. You might see this in the Task Manager, click Processes and click CPU to view what is taking up CPU time. If you see SVCHOST taking up an alarming amount of CPU time, it's windows update. If you find this is the problem, there is a patch available and I have written a batch file that clears up some of the temp files related to this issue. Let me know if you would like these files.

Just a thought, and one that is often missed, What power supply do you have? If it is under rated this could also cause the exact symptoms you are seeing. I would suggest it be at least 400 watts. The PSU is one of the most overlooked components in a PC, which is crazy as it is responsible for powering everything in it, not only that, when they blow they can possibly take your motherboard or more with it. Blade is right about Pentium D's, they generally run hot by design. He also mentioned RAM, you may find that re-seating the memory may solve the problem as I have often seen memory being effected by bad connections over a space of time. Blade is also right about some tech people not knowing what they are on about. I had to sort out problems with a PC once that had been built by a local computer company, one of the stupidest things they had done was to secure the hard drive in the system with packing tape because they didn't have the correct mounting brackets. Yeee Harrrr! I'm wondering about your hard drive. When your PC crashes, do you ever hear a small clunk sound or the hard drive powering down? Can you let me know what drive you are using: Make, model and size. There are drives out there that have known problems. Another thing to check is if your graphics card has a fan, make sure it hasn't died or clogged up. Over heating GPUs can crash your system too. If your PC blue screens again, can you write down the crash code at the top and post it here, it might indicate what caused it.

Am I to assume this is a laptop? If so, have you made sure that there is good air flow through the laptop by using a vacuum cleaner on the vents. Don't forget never to block any vents during use especially any underneath. The reason I ask is your system may be overheating and this can cause multiple problems, especially those you have just described.

What is the forum about? I might be coaxed into setting one up using the same software this place uses! Clare.

OKay I have a problem, I have built a PVR and using an ATI Radeon 9200, it's half height so it will fit into my PVR. I have set it up so my TV is the primary screen, and it is terrible. I am getting screen tearing like you will not believe. While moving windows on screen is slow too, like an old GFX CARD (I am using this on my TV which is set as the primary and only output device) even thought I have the latest drivers installed. I know it ain't a Sink issue as I have tried that..... I am guessing that the output to SVIDEO has some processing and that it is being delayed. Does anyone know of a better half height card that outputs to SVIDEO and is as fast as it's output to SVGA or DVI?

Don't be silly, that's just crazy talk :lol:

OK, how do I know the rice really has been donated?

Of course you can, all you do is to bake the drive for 40 mins on gas regulo 7, with an old RLL hard drive next to the oven (RLL Drives soak up data) and then all that lovely data will be on it.. Don't forget that those drives were measured in megabytes, so you may need a few of them. OK we all know that was a joke, but being real, what you need to do is to print out all your data and photocopy the lot. It's the only way you can back up your stuff.

I wouldn't trust something said by someone who reckons that SATA is a file system and that they have a special SCSI cable for testing IDE drives. Again, over and over I will say: Plugging an IDE drive into a PC while it is on is very bad practice. It's not dangerous for you per say as the voltages are max of 12v and low current, but you could cause permanent damage to the drive and/or motherboard. On a note of data recovery, did you know that you could probably retrieve all the data if you remove the drives platters and bake them in an oven for 20 mins at gas mark 6. Once baked, tap the platters over a bowl and all the files will fall off into it. You can then pick the files up and drop them through the USB slots of the PC and hey presto, you're a master of data recovery! Note: One of the paragraphs above was a fabrication.

It's a shame there wasn't a section on the forum for hilarious threads, as this one is one of the best candidates I have seen in ages.

Actually you're not 100% correct. If you read my earlier post about SATA, not all SATA drives are hot swap capable. You need a drive and motherboard that support this option. IDE to USB I already mentioned too :)

I'm waiting for him to say that he changes internal fuses on PSUs while they are still plugged in :^o

I'm sorry but you are obviously off your rocker. I am a technician in a university and have been so for the last 20 years and I am Comp TIA A+ and Microsoft MCDST certified. I think I know what I am talking about and I really have to clear up your last post as you did talk a load of BS there (sorry, but I am being honest): 1. Plugging in hard drives while the system is on is a bad idea, I don't care if you get away with it now and then, but you're asking for trouble. Listen to a professional and DON'T DO IT. 2. (IDE is a type of drive, SATA is a type of filing system). You're having a laugh aren't you? FAT, FAT32 and NTFS are file systems. SATA is a drive standard, or to put it simply, SATA drives are the ones that connect to the motherboard with the little red cables, or have you not seen them yet? 3. (Did I mention it is on SCSI cable I have specifically for testing and fixing hard drives?) Do you actually know what SCSI is? And I really hope you're not implying you're plugging IDE drives into a SCSI cable as that is impossible, for a start a SCSI cable is completely the wrong size and a completely different standard. SCSI these days is usually for server environments as you can connect up to 16 devices to one interface which is useful for RAID. I can't wait to hear how you set the ID and LUN numbers on an IDE drive :) OK, please don't make another post like your last one as you're making yourself out to be a bit of a fool. You are asking professionals here and you should heed our advice. Sorry if I sound harsh but I meet people who thought they knew it all because they "play around" with computers all the time, and guess who they turn to when they screw it up? Yes you got it, us! You need to swallow your pride and listen. On a last note: The only way you should ever plug an IDE drive into a system while it is on, is if you use an IDE to USB converter. Then and only then are you allowed to do it as USB is hot swap happy.

Yes, Vista's boot manager is far superior. Alternatively you could add a 2nd hard drive, install Vista on one, XP on the other and use the BIOS to select the drive order. This will mean that they both are completely independent and have no effect on each other and still be able to read data off either.

OK if your hard drives are IDE, then no, you cannot hot swap hard drives. ALL IDE drives have to be installed when the computer is off. If you plugged an IDE drive in when it was on, then you really did risk damage to its on board controller. No ifs or buts, and I don't care who told you what, that is the fact. Some, and I mean SOME SATA drives are hot swappable, which means you can plug them in while the PC is on. But you must have a motherboard and drives that are hot swap compatible. Not all motherboards and SATA drives support this option. Some SCSI systems also allow hot swap, but you must make sure that the termination is correct on them, and usually if you're hot swapping SCSI drives, then you're using cradles that sort termination, ID numbers etc out for you using dip switches on the back of the cradles host. What is your system, can you give us more information please? Addition: Rhys is correct. NEVER play with internal components while your PC is on. And I don't mean sleeping, I mean powered off completely so that there is no power going to the motherboard. If you can press the on switch on the front of your PC and it comes to life, then that is not without power. You usually have to unplug the mains or click the switch on the back of the PSU. Even after doing that, press the power button to deplete any residual energy still left in the PSUs capacitors. Once the PC is DEAD and totally without life, are you really safe to insert, remove, alter anything. Take the above precaution with zest, as it may save your components. Oh and don't forget to ground yourself before touching anything inside the case to avoid zapping components with static built up in your body that could cause failures and intermittent faults.