Greatsilverwyrm

Yes..that just made things worse.. :( :P

Alright now, let's not turn this into a religious debate, we've had plenty of those.

Pipalonias, you say that none of us have been on both sides, you also make generalizations that, being generalizations, by definition, are untrue. I have quit several MMOs, at least one major one (EQ), and I don't feel that I was addicted. I'm not saying that people can't become addicted, but, I am saying that not everyone who plays MMOs are addicted to them, which seems to be what you keep trying to hammer into us.

the shockwaves are big disks that go out from all sides of the circle. think of a donut with a dot in the middle of its hole. the dot is the planet/star/chunck of whatever, and the donut is the shockwave. I just thought it looked cooler with two of them lol, but Ill take one out. I assume u mean the trail when u say sunburst?? Its a trail of sparks or whatever from a chunck that went flying off I know what a shockwave is, I was curious as to why they're going the wrong direction..

Why are there two shockwaves? Why are those shockwaves running perpendicular to the direction of the force of the explosion? Why is there a bizarre sunburst deal under the text that seemingly leads from nowhere?

Nothing in Scheduled tasks, checked through power settings already, can't find any GPU-specific power options.. This is odd.

I'm really starting to wonder what the hell is going on, because this is the single most inconsistant problem I've ever had.. It doesn't always happen, I can't find anything else abnormal other than the wierd stuff that's happening.. I'm boggled..

Each character is allowed to have 2 professions (classes). You have a primary profession and a secondary profession. To balance the game better, characters are capped at level 20. If you want any other info on the game, feel free to ask. :)

Another feature of trillian I really like is the meta-contacts.. Basically it lets you take people who you have multiple contacts for, and put them as one item on your buddy list. Handy if you have friends who seem to enjoy having 20 names for no other reason than having 20 names.. I'd agree that the IRC support on it sucks, though. I use mIRC just for compatability with most people..

I've done a log and gone over it myself, and haven't found anything I haven't been using since before this started happening. I'll post a log when I get home, though, and see if you find anything.. I have checked the logs and there aren't, or don't seem to have been any errors. I'll try and do that, Matt.. I have another theory, though.. I thought that perhaps one of my dogs came in and bumped the restart button, but, it happened once or twice when I'm sure my room was shut, and that doesn't explain not being able to log-in when it happens..

The weirdest thing is that it doesn't do it consistantly, there's a good half the time when it doesn't happen..

Re-read my first post.

I scan for both spyware and viruses regularly. I have a program that gives me temps and it's not a heat issue. My memory is fine, if it wasn't I'd be having other problems and they'd be more frequent. I don't know why you're asking about a BSOD, as I told you, the problem occurs while I'm away. If I was there to see what happened I'd most likely know what the problem was.. Off topic, can_t_escape, overheating can indeed make your computer restart, I've had it happen before.

If spybot and ad-aware did nothing, it's possible you have messenger popups (not msn). Do the popups look like normal internet popups? Or do they look look like the kind of box you get when you have an error? A screenshot of one of the popups may be helpful..

Unless you're on a budget, then it's the answer to none of your problems. Why are we nitpicking his selection, guys? He just spent $850 on a computer and we're telling him it sucks? How is that supposed to make him feel? Sounds like a good deal, Shippou, enjoy it! Zonda is right, though, sometimes major manufacturers put some undesirables on there, so you might want to run ad-aware and/or spybot when you get it. You should also give a glance through the add/remove programs list and remove the ones you're 100% sure you aren't going to use. If you're unsure on some, the Tech & Computers board is always here to help. Don't be too worried about losing something completely if you uninstall it, though, your PC should come with disks to reinstall most of what comes on it.

First..do as you said and download spybot and ad-aware.. As for the task-manager, double-click on the area outside the process list, it should be returned to normal.

Messenger Plus and Mess.be are lame... Messenger Plus is full of adverts, and Mess.be has a poor selection and the stuff is too much of a pain to install..

I know that you guys hate topic titles like that, but, I can't think of a better way to describe it.. On my keyboard I have about a dozen "multimedia" buttons that I can assign to open programs or perform an action or whatever. I have one of them set to lock the computer.. However, every once in a while I'll come back, and the computer has either logged me off, or restarted, or something, but I have to log back on. When that happens, usually I get the "loading personal settings.." message for a seemingly indefinite time, without me actually logging on, so I have to restart for it to work. This happened to me last night, and when I logged on, every few seconds my computer would hang for a few seconds. I staked out the process manager but couldn't find anything out of the ordinary, or anything that had a large CPU usage when my computer would hang.. I locked my computer after messing around for a while, and went to bed. When I woke up this morning it had done the log-off or whatever thing again.. So, I restarted, got back in, and.. It took a ridiculously long time for everything to start up. This has happened several of last few times I've rebooted. So..any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.. Using WINXP SP2, Fully Updated. Don't know really what other info would be helpful to you, so, ask and ye shall recieve.

Pipalonias, I have quit several MMOs.. I played RS for 2 years and agreed that it was stupid, so I quit. I played EQ for about 2 months and agreed that it was stupid, so I quit. I've been playing GW for a while now, I really enjoy it, maybe I'll find that I ultimately don't enjoy it anymore, but for now, I believe that it is improving me. The people I have met through my gaming experiences have improved my mind and my social skills. Up until about a year ago I had zero confidence in "real life", now that's not the case. There's a few people that go to my school who are now really good friends that I would never have met other than through games. Let me just end off that you are the single most hypocritical person I have met in a long time.

I was asking you for actual scientific proof of your "poor people are the smartest" claim...

Guild Wars sharpens your mind. More on that further into my post. I've already said that I thought RuneScape was a waste of my time, and have stopped playing. Yes, RuneScape did get me into those things I mentioned, but not directly. Directly I am into them as a result of the communities and the people I have met through them. I still maintain that Socio-Economic Class has little to nothing to do with a person's intelligence. Until you can provide actual proof.. Now... Guild Wars... I don't know what version or where you played, but if you think it's just a click fest, you haven't played the game. If you're any kind of a serious player there is a good deal of strategy to it. Which skills to use, who to attack when, who to have in your party, etc..

What kind of pictures are you looking for..?

That's just the thing, Pipalonias, I wouldn't have started them at all, because I wouldn't have known that they were interesting, or existed, or whatever... The smartest people are poor? Ok, now it's your turn for some logical backup. Show me proof other than a half-wagoned theory. Show me scientific studies. Give me real-world, modern-day examples. I think that you are holding far too tightly onto RuneScape. Most of my defenses against MMOs are not defending RuneScape. I agree that RuneScape is a mindless click-fest that no real good comes of, which is why I stopped playing it after I realized that there was more grind than a chop-shop. However there are good games out there. There are games that can sharpen your mind. As for the wording thing, I don't want to get into a huge argument over that, but I think people would agree that the wording of that entire sentence/paragraph was poorly worded. The poor choices compounded on each other, and to fix one you would have to unravel the whole thing.

Who says you learn more from say, going to the mall with some friends, than you would from playing an MMO for a couple of hours? I've found that many of the things I've experienced and learned either directly through, or because of gaming comunities, that can be applied to the "real world" and/or have made me better as a person.. For instance, I would never have gotten into computer graphics or art at all were it not for MMOs, and art is a major part of my life right now. Same thing with computers. 7 years ago I didn't know a mouse from a megabyte. Now I'm looking seriously into pursuing computers and technology in some form as a career path. Without online communities, I would not be nearly as good a writer as I am now, nor, I think, would I be as intelligent. Games, as long as they are good, spark your mind, make you think. I also, at the risk of being a hypocrite, have not resulted to personal insults when trying to prove a point. Had opponents to games expanded - "prolonged" was a poor choice, forgive me for changing it - their miniscule minds with some.. On second thought you complete that. I can't begin to try to deal with all the poor wording.

Trillian's renaming capabilities is better for msn than it is for AIM.. One of my biggest pet peaves is people who have like 5 sentances for a display name, it's ridiculous.. "Joe says: Hey, what's up? I like this one song called 'I love you always' it's really good and has meaningful lyrics and really speaks to me. Here's some lyrics: 'I love you always you'll always be mine lalalalaaaa' says: nm" *twitches* Note that the choice of song was completely random, I couldn't think of anything better, and that works as a nice cliche'... There are some other features I really love about Trillian as well, the main one being that it's fully skinable. No more bulky chat windows!