Vidi

If you're willing to pay, grab a copy of Kaspersky. I got an OEM copy (1 year lisence, 1 pc) for about £12. Very easy to use, doesn't hog resources and has an excellent detection rate. Although if you aren't willing to pay, Microsoft Security Essentials is also a very good anti virus. It's the one I recommend to anyone who wants a free AV.

Just put a password on your user account and press the Windows key and L (Win+L) and it'll put you back to the user selection screen where you'll need the account password to log back in. It's the easiest way.

Only really needed if you need the high performance. The Intel 6 core CPU is just.. Well, if you get that you must have a lot of 0's in your bank balance. Otherwise for a high performance PC you should grab the AMD 6 core or a Intel i7 quad core.

How can it be confusing to use? I agree about it not being great for music, but neither is the Microsoft Crashware that we call Windows Media Player; use Songbird instead. VLC doesn't use a fancy UI, it doesn't list your music, playlists etc. And I disagree about WMP being bad for music. It has a easy to use UI, easy to make up playlists etc etc. It does what a music player should and it doesn't do anything stupid. Oh and I've been using WMP for about 5 years and I could count the amount of times it's crashed on me on one hand. That's pretty good if you ask me.

I agree with sbrideau, getting a router is the best way to go. A decent one won't cost you much.

On the topic of PSU's, don't cheap out on it. I'm not saying you should spend hundreds on one, but aim for a brand like Antec or Cosair. The PSU is the most important part of your PC, if you cheap out on it and install a graphics card it could end badly.

...How do you think all these people who get thousands and thousands of views started out? Hell, I remember watching a guy on YouTube who plays MW2 and recorded videos and did commentaries. He started from nothing, and now he has his dream job working for Machinima.com. Not everyone will end up hugely successful, but that's not always the point.

The 9500GT isn't a gaming card, i'd go with OldJoe's recommendation.

Try and convince her that the "expert" will cost you a fortune. Cause it will. It is not hard to replace a graphics card, just google "how to install a graphics card" and you're good to go.

I'm not following you, DX11 is for Vista as well. I've probably misunderstood you. No no my bad. DX11 is Vista and Win7. Thought they were gonna do it like DX10. My bad sorry.

As you're still using Vista, DX11 isn't that useful as it's Win7 only. So I'd recommend trying to get a 4870 or 4890. Both are good value and offer good performance. If you do plan on upgrading to Win7 in the future, the 5750 is fine, so is the 5770. However, the 4890 is faster than both, and the 4870 is on par with the 5770 at the moment. That said, as always with upgrading your graphics card, make sure your computer's PSU (power supply) can support the new card. Specifically, make sure it has a PCI-E 6pin adapter, as that's what most medium-high end graphics cards need, I know the 5750 and 5770 need one. The 5750 doesn't use that much power so anything around 400-500W would be fine running it, for the 4870 and 4890 I'd think about upgrading your PSU if your PSU is rated lower than 500W. To find out what your PSU is rated at just take the side panel off and look on the side of the PSU, there should be a sticker with some info on it.

VLC isn't that good for music IMO. It can be quite confusing to use as well. I personally use it for films, but I use WMP for music.

How'd you get that? He said the old case opened from the right and everything was fixed to the right. And that the new case opens from the left and everything fixes to the right. Unless he really did have some stupidly absurd case originally he's clearly made a typo but we can't just assume which bit is typoed. Because I know Guy and know he's not the most techy person out there (no offense) and I have seen Dell cases. I'm not saying I'm right but I think that's his problem.

What I got from the original post was that the case opens on the right (if facing the front case) and the mobo is mounted on the left, with access to everything through the right side. If this is the case, that'd mean the graphics card has been specifically made to fit this Dell case, or it has been flipped over. Or, the graphics card has been fitted/made specifically for this case and won't work in any other case. Pictures would make this a lot easier.

If it's five years old and using a Pentium 4, all the graphics power in the world wouldn't help you much. A 2ghz Pentium 4 would be a massive bottleneck, as TF2 depends more on the CPU than graphics.

It's a Dell. I don't know why you thought this would be a good idea, you should of checked the Dell before buying the case. Dell's have weird cases, that often open the "wrong" way (the right side panel would open, if you're looking at the front of the case). I don't really know what you can do, try flipping the gfx card around or something? If that doesn't work you're pretty much screwed.

You'd have to open your case (just take the side panel off) and check what it says on the PSU. You could, I guess, check the model number on the manufactures website and see if it tells you what the PSU is rated at. Easier to just open the side panel though. However, you also have to check what power connectors you have. Some graphics cards need separate power from the PSU. If I remember right, the ATI 5670 is a fairly cheap card and offers decent performance, and I don't think it needs an 6pin adapter from the PSU, so it'd basically plug and play (after installing the drivers, of course). It's also small too so it shouldn't be a problem fitting it into a small, but normal case. I say normal because prebuilts from the likes of Dell/HP can have very strange cases.

Microsoft Security Essentials is good, better than Norton/McAfee anyway. I'd recommend Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 if you want to pay for one. If you get an OEM copy it's not very expensive.

Again, how are the temps gonna get so high? And by high I mean 90c+. Graphic cards can withstand high temps. The only way a graphics card could get hot enough to damage it is if the GPU fan/heatsink broke. Pretty much all modern graphics cards have a fail safe now so that shouldn't cause any problems. As for PSU's, I'd recommend an OCZ, Cosair or Antec PSU, Cosiar being the best for PSU's and RAM. 500W-600W should do the trick.

There's a difference between hot and too hot. It'd run hot, but it shouldn't be a problem. A PC manufacture wouldn't release a PC in a case with so poor airflow that it causes any graphics card to over heat. Many, many people run high end video cards, or cards way way faster than a 220/240 with only a CPU fan, maybe 1 case fan and the GPU fan and they do fine. The cards onboard cooling will do fine, if you're that paranoid just buy a graphics card that has an aftermarket cooler, but it's certainly not required. An nVidia 9600GT/9800GT or an ATI 4850/4870/4890 are relatively cheap, and offer great peformance for the price. But obviously, as said many times, make sure you have a decent power supply.

Yea you could try that. Is it the CPU or GPU hitting 80c? A GPU hitting 80c is high, but it's not usually a problem on modern cards. A CPU hitting 80c is high, even under 100% load.

You pretty much answered your own question. Sounds like heat issues. Clean out all the dust in your case then try again. Make sure you clean out the dust in your GPU fan and CPU fan. Unmount your CPU fan so it's easy to clean the dust out, my old PC would shut down in games and the problem was a chunk of dust clogged in the heatsink. If there's still heat issues you have a dodgy fan or something.

I highly doubt your graphics card is loose. I mean, for it to become loose would mean you'd have to had moved your PC about a lot, and your problems would happen 24/7 if it did. It is probably over heating. I'm not 100% sure if this is possible, but a possible explanation for why the monitor turns off might be because the graphics card is hitting a fail safe, a point where the card shuts its self off cause it's too hot and therefor the monitor has no input so it goes into idle/powersaving mode. This could also cause shut downs. However, it could also be from driver problems. I was beta testing a game recently and I had big driver problems, to the point where my monitor went into idle mode, I think the drivers rebooted or something. So the drivers could also be the problem as well. If it is over heating, clean out all the dust in your PC, preferably using a can of compressed air, a small dust cloth should be ok if you don't have one of those. Just don't let it cling on to anything in the PC. To confirm if it's over heating download either Speedfan, GPU-Z, HWMonitor to monitor graphics levels and post your temps here.

Open up your case and check out what the PSU is rated. Some PCI-E graphics cards also require power from the PSU as well, although I don't know if a 9600GT requires that. When you find out what your PSU wattage is, and also if it has a 6 pin PCI-E power connector, you can start looking at cards to buy, usually on prebuilt PC's the PSU's supplied with it is just powerful enough to get you buy and not intended for upgrades.