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Hi all, My desktop is OOU at the moment because of a faulty PSU and as a temporary replacement I have bought a Dell Inspiron 17R SE 7720. I had 2 SSD's in my desktop, an OCZ Vector 512GB and an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB, but when I connect these to the 17R VIA a USB 2 adapter the Vertex is recognised but the Vector is not, including in Disk Management. I also have an HP 6510b laptop and the same thing happens there. Is there any reason I a missing?It could be the external enclosure. Have you swapped the drives between the known good enclosure and the drive that wont work? I have also heard about some cheap external enclosures having issues with drives larger than 500GB. What is the make/model of the external enclosure being used to look up specs?Thanks for your reply. The adapter is actually from a Seagate Goflex 250GB external drive where the USB end can be detached and used to plug other drives in. The "activity" lights on it do not illuminate when the Vector is plugged into it.The firmware in that external adapter SATA to USB board I BELIEVE can not address the larger SSD. I ran into a similar issue with an old Maxtor 80GB external that I placed a 320GB IDE HDD into it and it wouldnt work. Come to find out I had a 137GB HARD drive limit on the external drive so I ended up upgrading it to 120GB instead.

*If you have another drive 500GB or larger to try on this you can confirm that it is in fact the capacity limitation which I believe that controller /adapter has.

You can buy pretty cheap empty external sata hdd cases and pop this drive inside. This one linked supports up to 1TB capacity for $7  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2C50SK1082

If it doesnt work in this $7 case, then the SSD may have been damaged when the PSU died. Although rare, it could happen if the PSU caused an over voltage output.Ok it sounds as though that is the reason, as the OCZ Vector is relatively new and was working fine till the PSU problem. Since the laptop has caddies for 2 drives I will just put it in the unused one temporarily.
Thanks again!

was that TrendMicro purchased RECENTLY? And from where?Do a Google, this guy has posted in lots of forums. Yes, because clearly I am in need of help, how is that relevant or helpful?We don't UNDERSTAND your objective.
You can get older models of USB drives from vendors who sell in lots Some of these have crystals instead of the newer designs. Yu could just buy a few and tear them open and FIND out how they are made. At least one major vendor claims they even has crystals non the new models. So why have you no called them on an 800 number and talk to them?

In general, this forum is to help individuals with personal computer issues, not to help commercial users locate the lowest price on legacy hardware.
To put it another way, we enjoy helping people, but not to the point of doing  their work for them. We would like to know if this topic would be helpful to other uses, just just a firm that has made a secret discovery about use of a legacy item.

Perhaps you company has discovered that crystal oscillators help keep INSECTS out of a computer. If so, share it will the rest of us.


Salmon said it best...
It's been posted on many Forums...and the OP is extremely vague on what exactly he wants...
Other than that you guys are spinnin your WHEELS for no apparent reason...

Goodafternoon everyone,

Ive searched and searched for an answer but to no avail. I had been using my HDTV as a secondary screen for once in a while movie watching with no problems. I have a HP Pavilion dv6 notebook computer. Today, I plugged my HDTV into my laptop via HDMI and i realized that the screen flashes and goes black. I TRIED to use as extended monitor as WELL as updating drivers, with no luck. The screen resolutions are the default resolutions I have been using from previously successful times using my HDTV. Does anyone have any SUGGESTIONS or am I out of luck with this?Sounds to me like connections were swapped with 1 or more units powered up...
Never a good thing...more details.I"m a firm believer in doing a restore prior to doing anything else when i run into a problem. Depending on what I have LOADED etc. You wouldn't believe how MANY times it has fixed problems.

If you can help me, You will have recovered for me about 100 hours of work.

I had an old laptop - 'LAP1'.  It was an HP Pavilion dv6700.  It died.  Or at least, would not boot up anymore, and it said the 'disk was about to fail'. So I extracted the hard drive, connected it to a hard-drive usb connector - a 'sabrent' - and attempted to access the files via an even older laptop I have - 'LAP2'.  The older laptop (LAP2) is a compaq presario m2000.  But I cannot access the files.  A new drive appears in mycomputer.  And the 'safely remove software' icon shows that a 'FUJITSU MHY2250BH USB Device' is connected.  But when I try to access the drive, it says that it 'isn't formatted' and asks me if I want to.  I said no, but I know that will erase everything on it.

1) So how do I access what is on this drive?  When I did it years ago, I just plugged in the usb, and had access LIKE any other external hard drive.

Also: LAP1 was windows, I believe 7?  Or 6?  And LAP2 is running windows xp.  It is really slow.  Like really slow.  But it is the only computer I have access to as we speak.

2) If I ditched LAP2 for a newer computer, would I maybe have easy access to the LAP1 hard drive?

Thank you in advance!!Nobody?  Did I post in the wrong section or do something else wrong?  I need help here, or I'm really screwed.   Does anyone have any suggestions?No, upou did what you could.
At this point you either give up or pay a tech to do it with special equipment.
Yes, there are some opposites, but you are almost at a dead end already.
Can you stat the old laptop with a 'live' CD?

HTTP://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php


Get an external enclosure for the laptop HDD you want the data from...
The reason you are getting the error message is the laptop is attempting to boot from the other HDD....which will not work properly as it's from a different PC. Quote from: patio on November 08, 2013, 05:43:20 AM

Get an external enclosure for the laptop HDD you want the data from...
The reason you are getting the error message is the laptop is attempting to boot from the other HDD....which will not work properly as it's from a different PC.

Hello all, i am using an AMD A10-5700 and a biostar Hifi A85W with 6 GB DDR3. Can you help me what graphics card to pick that would match with the performance of my gaming?

I have 200$ budget for this...
please feel free for your suggestions as i wanna get it soon by nextweek!  you can use any VIDEO card you like as long as you have enough watts from the power supply to drive it.

Your CPU is an APU so it already is a CPU/GPU... so your options are to get a more powerful APU or install a video card along side this APU and have the APU run only as a CPU with the integrated GPU disabled.

*Personally I like the seperation between CPU and GPU even though APU's have been proven to be faster internally due to the GPU and CPU all contained within the same chip. I have avoided APU's for gaming as for in the case of my neighbor thinking he was going to save money on not having to get a video card for his gaming build, he found the APU to be a let down for gaming. He ended up having to install a video card along side the AMD APU to get the performance that he required although there are some high end APU's that are fine for most gamers.What games do you play, and what resolution?  What power supply do you have?thanks for your answers. I am actually playing shooters like crysis, but not in high resolution. I understand with my budget is no high class video card possible, but i am still hoping that there is room for improvement without getting ripped by the computer shops

my power supply is something about 650 watts and i have 24" monitor. CURRENTLY i am playing at 1080x720 or something like that What exact power supply (make and model) do you have?  $200 is enough to get you a decent video card, but we need to know your power supply to make sure it's safe.thanks calum. Its an antec true power.How old is the Truepower?  If it's an original Truepower, it's due REPLACING, as they used a capacitor design that did not fare well with heat and degraded quite badly, causing degraded performance.  If it's a Truepower New, or Quattro, it'll be fine, and I'll make a recommendation on that.  Let us know That sounds like a bad news to me

I dont know whats old in your opinion, i bought the psu last year. I guess in IT time its already old


Can i still ask for an advice for the graphics card? Or do i simply dont need any Oh, no, that'll be absolutely fine then.  The Truepower series with the ISSUE I'm referring to are the original Truepowers, 5+ years old.
An AMD 7850 or 7870 should fit into your budget, or for a little less consider the Nvidia GTX 650Ti Boost or AMD 7790.Just got the 7870 finally for just $190. It feels like "flying" through the game now  Glad to hear the upgrade was a success enjoy your card!

Hello,



I'm thinking of replacing my 965 Black Edition 3.4GHz Processor (Which died) with a  FX 8350 the only PROBLEM i have found about changing to the FX 8350 is that a lot of people have been saying they needed to update there motherboards to be able to USE it my motherboard is a M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 and i was wondering if i would need to update mine and if so how would i go about doing that without a processor?



CheersIf you mean update the BIOS without a CPU, there are plenty of companies advertising on the web which will flash your chosen BIOS version onto a chip and mail it to you. COSTS about $10 or equivalent.

Thank you I found that very helpful! But is it a necessary to update my BIOS straight away can I not install the new cpu and then update it?


Cheers Quote from: SCATTERHD on July 26, 2013, 05:01:22 PM

Thank you I found that very helpful! But is it a necessary to update my BIOS straight away can I not install the new cpu and then update it?

i have found about changing to the FX 8350 is that a lot of people have been saying they needed to update there motherboards to be able to use it

Hi and thanks for taking interest in my problem.

My friends compute is a compaq pressario and is running slow. She asked me to "fix it up" if I can!

The hard drive is an IDE about 60 Gig with several drive allocations D: is set up for recovery & the card readers in the front panel. I,F,G,H.
This computer is running Windows Vista Home Basic, SP 2, has 2 gig of ram.

D:, the recovery destination, is only 5.7 gig and had 5.69 gig in it.

The C: drive is 68.8 Gig and has about 15 Gig space on it.. So prretty full, but no so much I would have thought to make it run so slow.
I deleted a few programs that were not in use but that didn't give me very much space in return.

I cleaned out all the dust with a vacuum, removed the heat sink and replaced the thermal cream, then ran Windirstat to find out what was where.
I don't know if doing a Defrag would do so much either.

D: seems to be part of the problem ( maybe all of it) and so I need to allocate more space to it. Can someone guide me please as to how I should go about this please.

To give her some more space I thought the easiest way was to put in another drive and move all the photo's and videos over to the new drive. ( Yes I took a back up of them already. Thanks for thinking of me.)

I added a 40 Gig to it, however there is only the one IDE connection on the motherboard (which is a 945GCT-HM), with only one drive connection on that ribbon. I changed the ribbon to a ribbon with 2 connections and added the new drive pinned as a slave.
When I booted it up the second drive is not acknowledged? Everything else went OK.

Question there is, will it be recognized?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions you might give.

(I'm nearly a Guru. Well, in their eyes. Really I'm just a mere mortal.)  The 2nd drive needs to be jumpered as Slave...and connected to the middle connector on the ribbon cable.

P.S. Never use a vacuum insice a PC...they generate tons of static electricity...enough to damage critical components.Thanks patio, I have the drive on the end of the cable for distance compliance more than anything. I jumped it as a slave though.
I'll have to get a longer twin cable then and try it.

and

WOW I didn't know that. Guess I'm just lucky I didn't spark up a fire in there with the vac.

Like I said, everything worked OK when I fired it up. (Kissed on the (cheek) then. )
I won't do that again. I'll get a compressed air can next time.
Does that computer also have SATA connectors on the motherboard?  I have a Compaq tower system, a Pentium 4, that has both IDE and SATA connectors on the motherboard.  I'm currently using a SATA hard drive in it.  Yes soybean, the SATA is connected to the CD Player/burner and there is a second one available on the mobo.

I dont want to put too much effort into it though, I dont want to change drives or put my good SATA drives in it.

After all it is the "X sex".

I would like to just open up some more space on the recovery drive now to allow for backups to take place.
D: drive has allocated 5.7Gb of space total with 7.2 Mb free.
If someone could give me a hint how I can do this I would be very happy. I would like to give it back soon.


I added the drive in correctly now (thanks patio ) and transfered about 14 Gb to it, out of the 40 Gb free on the new E:drive.
Pictures, videos,downloads, that sort of thing. All the big space thieves. ( I haven't deleted them off the C: drive yet though. Thats next now that I'm sure it is all OK. )

I have been researching this "make recovery bigger" and from what I researched .... You cant!

A post from patio here suggests I don't play with it?

( I actually went to other sites about this too as a matter of info. Howtogeek, techguy, microsoft etc. )

From microsoft website
"System Restore has an automatic restore point space-management feature that purges the oldest restore points to make room for new ones, while still enabling the user to recover from any recent destructive changes.

In Windows 7 on computers with hard drives over 64 GB, System Restore can take up to 5 percent of the disk or a maximum of 10 GB of the disk space, whichever is less. On computers with hard drives of 64 GB or less, System Restore can take at most 3 percent of the disk space.

In Windows Vista, System Restore can take up to 15 percent of the size of the volume or a maximum of 30 percent of the free disk space, whichever is less."

So is the allocation a Windows thing or can I adjust it to a larger amount of space.
Is it a percentage of the drive size?
So many questions where do I start?

Many thanks for your assistance, ImnoGuru.A reference: http://lifehacker.com/254365/vista-tip--reduce-system-restore-disk-usage Quote from: ImnoGuru on July 13, 2013, 06:27:22 AM

I added a 40 Gig to it, however there is only the one IDE connection on the motherboard (which is a 945GCT-HM), with only one drive connection on that ribbon. I changed the ribbon to a ribbon with 2 connections and added the new drive pinned as a slave.
When I booted it up the second drive is not acknowledged? Everything else went OK.

D: drive has allocated 5.7Gb of space total with 7.2 M b free.

So when it performs a new backup, (I'm thinking that it deletes the first one to make space for the current backup) the computer automatically overwrites the details with new information.

I can see some more work coming from this... I wonder if she even has a recovery CD?  I don't think I'll ask.

I received a phone call a few minutes ago from a woman claiming to be from a tech company who said she had received error reports from my Windows computer and would help me take steps to correct them. She also mentioned a virus going around causing Windows systems to crash. I never send error messages out in the rare event a PROGRAM crashes and I have working protection. This woman also called again after I hung up on her and said the call wound up disconnected. I chose not to stay on the line or listen to any of her directions in fear of messing up my system. Was this a legitimate phone call?I got the same call.   
I thanking him, said I would take care or it, and hung up. 
Legitimate?  Well, I have few jars of snake oil you can try. I got them from the brother of the guy that sold be the Golden Gate Bridge.  No, it was not a legitimate call.We have been having these cold calls for some time here in Great Britain. They originate in call centers in India, and may claim to be calling from Microsoft or your ISP. They claim you have one or more viruses and offer to "fix" it for a fee. It's a scam of COURSE. I believe they get your name & phone number from databases built by scanning and OCRing phone directories. DVD--ROMs containing these for most Western countries are widely available in Asia.

If there is one thing I know it is that the "do not call list" here in the U.S. does not do anything! I have both my home phone and my cell on it and STILL get such calls! Quote from: funguy11 on July 17, 2013, 05:17:26 PM

If there is one thing I know it is that the "do not call list" here in the U.S. does not do anything! I have both my home phone and my cell on it and STILL get such calls!

The calls are scammers. The Do not call list would be for legitimate businesses.

Not legitimate and I would have recorded the conversation and posted it onto youtube along with the telemarketer that called the other day and told us we were the grand winners of a prize from a concert that my wife went to recently, and you can hear the other 20 telemarketers in the background trying to trick 20 other people into whatever scam they were selling. The second call from this potential scam was great in the fact that the caller named Dennis was struggling at the get go to leave the message on our answering machine and then he fumbled worse and worse and then crackle crackle crackle on the answering machine. When I heard that message I was like wow this guy is failing fast, pull up, pull up and then CRASH. I posted it on youtube the other day and can share it here if anyone is interested in it.

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes. I have been given a 'dead' asus laptop (HDD failure) that i would like to repair/refurbish by replacing the HDD. I feel confident enough to do this and see it as a cheaper way of getting a laptop than buying a new one. Replacing the hardware seem easy enough and poses no fears for me - i have in fact already had the machine open and removed the old drive. What i am concerned and need advice/help on is what happens once i have installed a new HDD, How do i go about installing an operating system and basicaly getting the new HDD talking to the rest of the machine? I have A set of windows vista and 7 recovery DISKS which i am told should install windows onto a new HDD as well as reinstalling onto the old one. I am also thinking of using this opportunity to ditch windows and try a LINUX based OS. I have install discs for several of these.

The other problem i have is that i am not sure if the optical drive on themachine is working properly so may have to load the OS using a USB connection (flash drive or external HDD). How would i install windows using this method? (LINUX OSs no problem).

Can anyone help or advise me with this. Phlease ask if you need more info. ThanksDoes the laptop have a valid Windows key?  If so, you can GRAB the official ISO from here.  This is better than using the Windows restore disk as it's a clean installation, no added rubbish, and it won't rely on anything else (some restore disks still rely on a recovery partition on the HDD which of course will be missing).  You can then burn this to a disk to install, or put it on a USB drive as linked below.
To create a USB drive which you can boot and install Windows 7 from, you can follow this guide - there's a link at the bottom for an alternative method which is easier, and uses the ISO file which you can download from my earlier link.

All you should need to do is boot from the install media, whether that's DVD or USB, and install the OS - it's as easy as that, no other setup should be required. 

If you install more than one OS, you will need to install the oldest first - so if you install Vista and Windows 7, install Vista first, and partition the hard drive appropriately before beginning, then install Windows 7 afterwards.  I'm not overly familiar with Linux as it's been a while since I've installed or used any distributions, but I believe Linux should be installed afterwards as its bootloader can handle Windows as well as Linux, whereas the Windows bootloader only handles Windows.Begin
Let me make a general observation. At one time I felt very confident about repairing computers myself. However, when it came to laptops, I was not as successful. There are so many variations and laptop design that it's quite easy to make a mistake and damage something. However, replacing the hard drive in the laptop is not a major chore.
Based on my own experience, this is what I generally recommend for anybody that wants to work on a dead laptop.
First of all find out what the computer is worth and replacement parts and make a judgment. You may also find a perfectly good used computer of the same make and model with a warranty that sells for LESS than the cost of the parts. Do the math. Let me say that again, do the math. In my opinion you could buy a used or refurbished laptop from a vendor that will offer you at least a 90 day warranty on the computer. If it doesn't break in 90 days, it probably would last even a year. The computer you have probably has some value as parts. You may find a buyer this willing to buy your computer and pay you for the parts. That will offset your cost of buying a used refurbished computer. I am estimating that you end up saving more money by buying the refurbished computer and then selling the parts of the old computer.
 My reasoning for this is us as follows: the people who do refurbishing do it in such a large scale that they have the advantages that you and I don't have. They have access to equipment, they have access to suppliers, and they have on hand trained technicians that have already done this before. They can refurbish the computer and sell it for profit for less than what you can. In my humble opinion.
I have purchased refurbished computers on eBay and all of the computers I have bought over eBay did work and were as described by the vendor. Now some of the other things I have bought on eBay were not always that well represented, but the ones that sell refurbished computers usually are straight dealers and they will not sell you junk.
So that is my recommendation. Go find the same make and model on eBay, locate a vendor with a reputation, and buy from him. Then try to sell the parts you have. There are some people that will buy the parts off of eBay thinking that they can repair a computer themselves. People who are just as confident as you are. But you have an advantage, you consulted with other people and got their opinion and you know better now.
Note to moderator: I did this on speech recognition, and if there are some really bad mistakes, please correct the mistakes.
 Microphone off.
Thanks.

To 'Geek-9pm'. Your post confuses me. if replacing the HDD and installing windows is as straightforward as Calum says in his post, why would i need to go through all the business of sourcing a 2nd hand laptop and then selling my current one for parts? While i appreciate the help it does sound a lot more time consuming and potentialy costly than just repairing my current machine. At the end of the day if really got suck with repairing my machine i could always take it to a repair shop and let an EXPERT take a look at itIf I were you I would ignore the bulk of it...replacing the HDD and installing the operating system is very straightforward.  Perhaps if you were proposing to replace the motherboard, LCD, inverter and other parts, I might agree - as it stands, just go ahead with your original plan because it makes perfect sense. Quote from: Calum on June 26, 2013, 05:53:45 AM

If I were you I would ignore the bulk of it...replacing the HDD and installing the operating system is very straightforward.  Perhaps if you were proposing to replace the motherboard, LCD, inverter and other parts, I might agree - as it stands, just go ahead with your original plan because it makes perfect sense.

Set up a USB stick with the Windows 7 ISO and put it into the machine (HDD removed) and switched on. Went straight into windows based setup/installer screens rather than DOS based setup screens. Not sure if this was because no HDD was installed and it will revert to DOS when the new drive is put in or whether this means reinstalling windows on a new HDD will be even easier than expected. I am hoping the latter is the case!!

Looked into SSDs and while i like the idea, was put off by cost per GB. Would have only got 32GB for the same price as i paid for 500GB with a conventional HDD. Might try one as a secondary drive sometime though. For now i want the storage space.

Feeling frustrated. New HDD not expected to be delivered until 28th July. Expected it sooner. Want to get on with things.

I'm trying to overclock my old pc:
Motherboard: Asus M3A32-MVP DELUXE/WIFI-AP
CPU: AMD Phenom 9500 2.2GHz
RAM: Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel 400MHz

The old system has a nice quad core cpu but it's clock speed lets it down. I'm not after mad speeds for the old thing, I was hoping for 2.5GHz but I'm not having much luck. Everytime that I increase the FSB speed above 210MHz the system fails to POST. I think the problem might be the RAM but I'm no expert (see topic title). My next step I suppose would be to increase DRAM valtages but I have no idea what they are currenty set to or what limits to give myself.

Help!You'll need to set your DRAM speed and latencies to match its advertised specs, or a little below.  Set the DRAM voltage to what it needs, too, which will likely be 1.8V-2.1V for your DDR2.
Then start to increase the bus speed, and CPU voltage if necessary, adjusting the CPU-NB speed too.

Here's a handy guide for your platform, which should explain in more detail.  I could repeat it all here but it's probably simpler to link to the above

Bear in mind that the original Phenoms were not known for being great overclockers, so don't expect fantastic results.  2.5GHz at least should be achievable, obviously depending on your particular CPU, your cooling, and the rest of your system, but again an extra 200MHz is unlikely to make much real-world difference.I recently ( few months ago ) overclocked my older system an Athlon II x4 620 AM3 quadcore 2600Mhz to 2795Mhz in a Biostar MCP6PB M2+ motherboard and I ended up bringing it back to native clock of 2.6Ghz due to the fact that the performance gain was not beneficial enough to be worth the chance stressing aged components to the point of failure.

To overclock my AMD CPU, I increased my FSB from 200Mhz x 13 multiplier to 215Mhz x 13 multiplier and it brought my CPU up 195Mhz, but this small increase of 195Mhz also increased its heat output of the CPU by a good amount with stock heatsink. I added a better $30 heatsink and got my temps down ( when overclocked ) from ( 55C to 60C ) to ( 40C to 45C ), but the 195Mhz increase was not as much of a performance boost as I had wanted it to be.

* Running Overclocked,  It was noticable in slightly faster boot time ( maybe 1.5 seconds faster to get to the logon prompt ) and programs starting /opening up slightly faster when using a stop watch to compare before and after, but the performamnce increase was not like making the older CPU system into a speed demon out of a normally POWERFUL in its DAY, but aged CPU among todays current processing power which is more than 4x more powerful in higher end CPUs than what I have.

Stability testing is important when overclocking as for it may boot up fine and act fine in the Windows Desktop environment, but then you load a game and you start to see issues or it crashes etc. The fastest I got my CPU up to that it would boot from post withouit crashing was 219Mhz FSB x 13 multiplier for 2847Mhz on a normally 2600Mhz CPU. But at 219Mhz FSB which is normally 200Mhz on DDR2 800Mhz RAM, games would crash. I backed it down to 218, and the games would run, but there seemed to be surging between the GPU and CPU to where my frames per second were jumping from 60fps to like 20 fps on timed intervals, so in a game such as World of Warcraft, I'd be on my drake flying and would have surges of moving fast followed by equally timed intervals in which the flying mount would slow, causing a surging like feeling with the game. Lowering the FSB further to 217, then 216, at 216Mhz there was very little surging noticed, and when dropping down to 215Mhz, the game, and all other games ran flawless. So for a few days I ran at 215Mhz FSB for an overclock to 2795Mhz.

I saw some claims of getting +600Mhz out of the Athlon II x4 620 quadcore to 3.2Ghz for the 2.6Ghz CPU, but I was not able to get my CPU to overclock that high and boot. Calum also helped me greatly with my overclocking questions and offered suggestions, but the Biostar MCP6PB M2+ just could not be configured in a way to break the 2847Mhz barrier and remain stable. Maybe with a different motherboard its achievable, but with multiplier maxed out at 13x with no ability to get 13.5 or 14x or more of a multiplier, I was stuck to just an around 200Mhz overclock. Also tried playing with voltages and dropping memory from 800Mhz to 667Mhz to gain some ground to drive the CPU higher, but couldnt get board to post trying suggestions here as well as online with what others have done to find an operational formula that allows the system to boot and run at a fast overclock. My RAM is 2 x 2GB sticks ( 4GB ) Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800Mhz RAM was used in a PRIOR gaming setup of my brothers in which he ran a Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz E6600 at 3.4Ghz with these same RAM sticks and liquid cooling for the CPU. So I know the memory is not the issue.  Here is the reference I saw that gave me false hopes for a sweet overclock... http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/255794-29-overclocking-athlon


I have since started to retire this Athlon II x4 620 Quadcore from my old gaming system with a AM2+ socket and stuffed it temporarily into my new gaming system with an AM3+ socket. My plans are to buy the http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113284 in September, an AMD FX-8350 8-core piledriver running at 4.0Ghz for my new build. (The most powerful CPU my new motherboard can handle ). And to make my original old system functional, I stuffed a cheap AMD Athlon 64 X2 4450B 2.3Ghz Socket AM2 Dual-core CPU into it for just $10 off of ebay.Alas I don't think that my motherboard will allow any real overclocking, no matter what I do the FSB cannot be increased above 210 and the multiplier only goes to X11 (I don't know if that's a CPU of mobo limitation). THANKS for the help though guys, although some of the recommended settings in that guide would have probably recked the computer. Don't forget you don't know how noobish I might be :p

I'm still keeping the extra 110Mhz.Just make sure your temps look good with use of Speedfan a free took to monitor temps. 50C or lower is what you want to be for CPU temp for that AMD CPU. If you are running too hot you may have to replace thermal compound or get a better heatsink to draw the heat away.

2310Mhz isnt bad vs 2200MhzIt's about a 4-5°C  increase at most, up to 64°C but I think that the cooler needs cleaning out. I am considering a replacment cooler anyway as I think that the bearings are on there way out on the current one anyway.

As evidenced by my recent CPU upgrade that seems to have cured my noisy fan problem.


I'm still struggling to understand something though:
The FSB is basicaly the input clock (a pulse provided by an ocsilator on the motherboard)?
The multiplier is part of the CPU that steps up the clock frequency separatly from the north bridge (is part of the CPU)?

How does one go about looking up what the FSB and multiplier limits and default values are before buying a system? (Not that I'm going to, just curious) Quote from: Accessless on July 12, 2013, 04:24:47 AM

How does one go about looking up what the FSB and multiplier limits and default values are before buying a system? (Not that I'm going to, just curious)

It's about a 4-5°C  increase at most, up to 64°C

Thats running too hot and I'd get a replacement heatsink for it asap, and drop your CPU back to 2200Mhz until the new heatsink is installed to avoid killing the CPU.

i have a desktop , when i turn on there is power supply in the board but the computer doesnot starts! i noticed even if there is power supply the fan isnt MOVING! any solution?Do you GET any lights or SOUNDS at all, even for a fraction of a second when pressing the power button?

First thing I WOULD try is to drain all power from the machine as follows:

• Unplug the machine from the wall
• Hold the power button down for at least 30 seconds
• Reconnect the machine to the wall
• Try TURNING it on again

Hi i'm gonna build a computer but i'm not 100% sure if these parts are GOOD enough to handle any high graphic games.
This is my first computer that i'm gonna build and i just want to make sure it's good.
My friend helped me choose these parts. I'm new to computers
A link to the "shopping list" http://www.webhallen.com/se-sv/varukorgen/?prodlist=154094q1%2C168421q1%2C167842q1%2C168548q1%2C177134q1%2C150360q1%2C137064q1%2C151011q1%2C106296q1%2C163249q1%2C163074q1%2C146723q1
I also have a mouse,screen and a keyboard but don't MIND them.
Can you list all the hardware?... the URL I followed brought me to just a page with

Quote

Sidan kunde tyvärr inte hittas

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Detta kan t.ex. bero på att du antingen har kommit till denna sida VIA en gammal länk eller att du har skrivit någonting fel i adressfältet. Om det är det förstnämnda så kommer VI att åtgärda felet så snart vi kan, förutsatt att ursprungssidan är under vår kontroll. Under tiden kan du pröva att söka dig till det du letar efter eller navigera dig fram till målet.

 

Vi har notifierats om problemet och kommer att kolla upp det så fort vi kan.

 

•Avancerad sökning
•Startsidan

I used to game crysis, tomb raider etc.. my motherboards seems to be dead. Are there any recommendations for an upgrade to HIGHER performance without switching the whole system?

anybody who knows about Biostar Z77x? and Asrock X79? im wondering that could be an option but of course I will have to choose 1 from that if which is better! or any recommendations please?

currently im using NVIDIA GTX 650 and my Processor is AMD A10-5700.

advance thanks for the help!Both of the boards you suggested are for Intel CPUs and will not work with or even physically fit your chip.  For your CPU you need a motherboard with a 'FM2' socket.  Brands I would recommend would be Gigabyte and ASUS as I have never had a problem with any of their boards.Motherboards compatible with your current CPU:

Asus:
A55-C
A55M-A
A55M-A/USB3
A55M-E
A85XM-A
F2A55
F2A55-M
F2A55-M LE
F2A55-M LK
F2A55-M LK PLUS
F2A55-M LK2
F2A55-M LK2 PLUS
F2A85-M
F2A85-M LE
F2A85-M PRO
F2A85-M2
F2A85-V
F2A85-V PRO

ASRock:
FM2A85X Extreme6
FM2A85X Extreme4
FM2A85X Extreme4-M
FM2A85X Pro
FM2A85M-DG3
FM2A85X-ITX
FM2A75 Pro4
FM2A75 Pro4-M
FM2A75M-DGS R2.0
FM2A75M-DGS
FM2A75M-ITX R2.0
FM2A75M-ITX
FM2A55 Pro
FM2A55M-VG3
FM2A55M-DGS R2.0
FM2A55M-DGS

Gigabyte:
GA-F2A85X-UP4 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A75M-D3H (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A75-D3H (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A55M-DS2 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A55-DS3 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A55M-HD2 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A85XM-D3H (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A85X-D3H (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A75M-HD2 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A85XM-HD3 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A75M-D3H (rev. 1.1)
GA-F2A85XM-D3H (rev. 1.1)
GA-F2A85XM-DS2 (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A85XN-WIFI (rev. 1.0)
GA-F2A55-DS3 (rev. 2.0)
GA-F2A55M-DS2 (rev. 1.2)
GA-F2A75M-D3H (rev. 1.2)
GA-F2A55M-HD2 (rev. 1.2)
GA-F2A75M-HD2 (rev. 1.2)
GA-F2A85XM-D3H (rev. 1.2)
GA-F2A85XM-HD3 (rev. 1.2)

Biostar:
Hi-Fi A85S Ver. 6.x
Hi-Fi A85W Ver. 5.x
Hi-Fi A75S3 Ver. 6.1
TA75MH2 Ver. 6.x
Hi-Fi A55S2 Ver. 6.x
A57A2 Ver. 6.x
Hi-Fi A85S2 Ver. 6.x
Hi-Fi A85X Ver. 5.x
Hi-Fi A75S3 Ver. 6.3
Hi-Fi A55S3 Ver. 6.1
Hi-Fi A85S3 Ver. 6.1
Hi-Fi A75S3 Ver. 6.2
A55MD2 Ver. 7.0
A55ML2 Ver. 7.x
Hi-Fi A75S3 Ver. 6.0
Hi-Fi A85S3+ Ver. 6.x

Just to name a few. I havn't checked if any of these have PCI-E x 16 ports although I would expect then all to, just a heads up.

MSI seem to have a few compatible motherboards though their website was too shoddy to find anything quickly and EVGA's website is worse... I don't even know what they sell.Out of that list i would dis-regard Asrock and Biostar both...they are 3rd tier (quality) as is MSI as mentioned above... Quote from: patio on June 20, 2013, 02:51:03 PM

Out of that list i would dis-regard Asrock and Biostar both...they are 3rd tier (quality) as is MSI as mentioned above...

...my motherboard seems to be dead. Are there any recommendations for an upgrade to higher performance without switching the whole system?...

I didn't say that any of those were good, I just said that they would work  I couldn't think of any other brands off the top of my head either.

I  had an amd Athlon  given to me I was told that the cmos battery had  GONE when I was given it and after I got another drive to put in it . it wont boot past checksum defaults loaded , I understood this to mean the battery so I have replaced it but it still only goes as far as the same error message , it will not let me enter the bios  am I looking at major motherboard failure ? please anyone ADVISE Please provide model number of the main board, if you can. Or the model number of the computer.
Also, what is the exact error message?
One of these?

    BIOS ROM checksum error
    System CMOS checksum bad - default configuration used
    Press <F1> to RESUME, <F2> to Setup
    CMOS Checksum Bad
    Press F2 to Run SETUP
    Press F1 to load default VALUES and continue
    CMOS Checksum Error - Default loaded

Often THEE is some option to confirm and enter BIOS.

Our Acer Aspire laptop would not start even though connected to the power supply so presumedly not reliant on the battery. It was hot. It appears that the battery was not recharging. Will replacing the battery solve the problem? I have seen mention of up dating the BIOS but that was for MUCH EARLIER versions of the Aspire.No. Do not replace the battery until you have MADE some TESTS

Some laptops, not all, will boot up normally without the battery in place. Consult your documentation for troubleshooting tips. Or go to the web site of the maker and see if that have tips about the Acer not starting up with power supply on the mains.

Acer Aspire laptop. No model number?

The model number is Aspire 5741G-434G64Mn. Thanks for that advice about battery tests.

How do I reset my HARDISK password when it is showing me, an option to type a password for my hard disk. I did not put a password it just happened. My acer won't boot up. Help!A HDD password does not just HAPPEN...
Who else has access to this PC ? ?
I would check with them for the password...other than that you are in a real PICKLE as HDD PASSWORDS cannot be undone ...without the original EXACT password i'm afraid.

I am looking into getting a new graphic card to play Simcity and other games. I found GeForce GT 610 2GB DDR3 PCI EXPRESS 2.0 Graphics Card. Is it good and will it work with my XPS 410. It has 410 W and is currently running a Nvidia 7300 LE.budget ? if you are getting some low end cheap cards such as 600 series or GTX 550 ...you're probably gonna have to upgrade that PSUYou'll struggle to play modern games with an older CPU like the Core 2 Duo in that system.  Any graphics card you buy that's capable of modern gaming will be severely held back by the processor.  Additionally, as mentioned above for most cards you will need a new power supply - however, your system is not a standard form factor, it's BTX, so a standard power supply may not fit.
In short, my advice would be to replace the system - and that's not something I say very often, but in your case I really do THINK it would be the BEST option.

I have an i5 3570k cpu and a hd 7770 gpu. What mobo should I use in the price RANGE of $50.00 - $100.00. Of course the computer is used for gaming. I'very never really dealt with mobo's so I'm kind of in the dark. You may need to save a bit more cabbage...

PERSONALLY i prefer either ASUS or Gigabyte for iNtel CPU's...You have any specific mobo in mind? I've looked through a couple msi mobo's but I can't find one with the lga 1150 that supports 3rd Gen and have the pcie 2.0 X 16 slot. I'd steer clear of any MSI MBoards...

Newegg.com is a good place to price compare both ASUS and Gigabyte...

With MSI you would be scrimping on one of the most important PC components...Could you link me one? I can't find one with the 2.0 X 16 plus the right chipset.I'd recommend something from gigabyte or ASUS with a Z77 chipset.  This chipset is required to allow you to OVERCLOCK the 3570k if you want that ability in the future.You may STRUGGLE to find many 1155 boards to buy these days as they're no longer in production due to Ivy Bridge being end of life.
Newegg have a couple of Asus P8Z77-V models available refurbished for $80 which seems like a decent deal to me."*censored*"   ? ? Quote from: patio on March 17, 2015, 05:51:14 PM

"*censored*"   ? ?

Hello

I have a Packard Bell PC and while I can play CDs, I cannot play DVDs. I was able to play them until recently.

I have checked Device Manager and the driver(s) are up to date. I have contacted the company and, as the guarantee has expired (the PC is about 3 years old), they have referred me to their download page (please see SCREENSHOT).

Which drivers in that screenshot should I download, please (they also see out of date!).

Thanks.



[attachment deleted by ADMIN to conserve space]I don't see anything in that driver list that supports an optical (CD/DVD) drive.  So, I think replacing the drive might be your only solution.  Thanks for your reply.

In Device Manager, it's an ATAPI DVD A device and the drivers for that are up to date.

I was hoping you wouldn't say that!

High1Optical drives haven't required drivers since Win ME....
How old is this drive ? ?

1 thing you can try is remove the drive via Device Manager...upon re-boot the drivers will automatically be re-installed...
If this doesn't work the drive has failed.

Also keep in mind they have different lasers for CD/DVD...i suspect the DVD laser has failed.I think you might be right: the DVD part of the drive may have failed, though the PC was bought new only three years ago.

If I had to buy a new drive, would I just be looking for an EXACT replacement from somewhere:  ATAPI DVD A DH16ABSH ATA Device?

And if I uninstall the drive before doing that it, is it this that I uninstall (screenshot)?

Thanks again.

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]Yes...
In answer to your 1st question any DVD BURNER will work...
Unfortunately these days 3 years is about all you get out of them...so SHOP price.OK, thanks for getting back to me.

High1No problem...Welcome aboard

I'm in the process of getting a new laptop (My old one got water in the SD port & fried the motherboard  ).

Anyway, I already have my 120GB SSD from my old comp... Basically, I just want to know if I should stick with my SSD, or leave the stock hard drive (which is the 500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive).  I use Photoshop, but that's about it.  I know quite a bit about the program side of computers, but when it comes to hard drives and such, it's kind of like a completely different language. Lol.

Sorry if this message is a bit confusing. I have both of my kids, and my friend's 4 kiddos today, so things are a bit hectic! 

Thanks for any help!Good question. Here is a very recent article.
SSD vs. HDD: What's the Difference?
Quote

Both SSDs and HDDs do the same job: They boot your system, store your applications, and store your PERSONAL files. But each TYPE of storage has its own unique feature set. The question is, what's the difference, and why would a user get one over the other? ...

I have about HALF the components for my 1st build.
 A lot of people are telling me optical drives are becoming less and less necessary.
 That kind of confuses me because how else would I install CD software that I BUY and play games? I understand a lot can be purchased/downloaded online.

 So after looking optical drives I see there are now Blu Ray" and "Blu Ray burners". I assume these are also optical drives? Are these drives that will also play Blu Ray DVDs? I also saw something about using a "Blu Ray" disc to use to copy/store files? And I read something about BDXL that can store upwards of 128gb PER disc? They are not cheap. And it might be cheaper to purchase just an Ext. HD, but I also like the THOUGHT of knowing everything is backed up on discs...
 '1: Can a Blu Ray drive also be used as a basic optical drive?
 2: Does a Blu Rau burners drive differ from a Blu Ray drive by lets you burn/copy files from your PC onto a disc?
 3: Is external or internal the better choice? Or does it not matter?
 4: Any rec. brands/models? I've read a lot of positive thinks about LG Blu Ray burners w/BDXL. Same with Pionner/Panasonic.
 5: When choosing a Blu Ray drive I assume I want to look speeds of writing/burning?


 Thanks everyone for helping answer all these ?'s for me over the last week. I have learned a lot from all of you.

 Cheers
 -Michael MN 1) Yes.
2) The burner lets you burn Blu-Rays...and all other formats.
3) I prefer internal.
4) LG is fine...i've had good luck with them.
5) You can...sure.

Just installed  Nvidia GeForce 210 on my G41M-VS3 R2.0 and the audio isn´t working.  I went into my Bios and enabled the onboard Audio and then when I go into managing sounds it still shows nothing.  I would appreciate it if someone knew how to solve this.  Thanks.Help plz  Just wait.  At this time of night many members are either watched videos or are in bed.
My motherboard is it? Which version of Windows? Have you ever had this issue before?
Some video cards are not easy to install.  They can conflict with other hardware, unless you install the drivers in a specific  ORDER.  But without the details of what PC you have, it is just a guess.

First guess. You should have installed the drivers first, then power down and install the video card.. That prevents Windows from messing up the installation. Did you do that? Or did you stick in the cared first?



I know I just wanted to use the audio on the computer, but yea I have with my other motherboard.  It did the same thing with this video card.  I just got this new motherboard ASRock G41M-VS3 R2.0 and it did again.  The GUY who fixes my computer put everything back together.  Drivers were installed after.  I have windows 7 portuguese edition.Help Plz  Please stop bumping your thread. This is a forum not a chat room and people will respond when they can.you dont need to panic, check for the audio drivers for your mainboard if is installed.

Next check the cable you are using for audio, if the are properly plugged and do not have been damaged.

Finally, check your volume  Yea it says the drivers are installed for the audio when I look at it through the list in control panel. The problem is that it isn´t showing any audio outputs on the bottom right of my screen.  It says I have no audio outputs available.have you checked the connections of your cable? if they are really good i mean if there is no driver issue you should not encounter this error. Unless you did not installed the required driversWell I think it´s still not recognizing the onboard default audio of the motherboard because of the video card installation it did the same thing last time.  I went into the bios on my old motherboard to enable it and it worked.  On this one it´s not for some reason though.  When I click on the default hd audio in the system menu and click update driver windows says the driver does not need to be UPDATED so yea I don´t know i´m really CONFUSED too.  If all else fails im just going to hook it up to my hd monitor and by an new hd cable.Reference:
HTTP://www.asrock.com/downloadsite/manual/G41M-VS3.pdf
Page 11 shows this is an old design motherboard.
If you go back to the built-in VGA, does the sound work?

Nope.  It still says in the device manager that my hd sound device is installed and working, but on the bottom right when I click the sound icon that has an x to the right of it and look for the audio to enable it or set is as the primary it says there is no audio to device installed.Wrong drivers then... Quote

I went into my Bios and enabled the onboard Audio and then when I go into managing sounds it still shows nothing.

Hello everyone,
 
Desktop with the problem: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227505
Speccy: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/7x8aiyMbpUrUq38y06miW5E
 
For the past five days, my computer has been freezing/locking up randomly. I won't be able to move my mouse, use my keyboard, or ctrl + alt + del. Any sound playing will get stuck and "loop." The only way out is to hard boot. No specific event has been causing this to happen. I can be playing a game, on YouTube, idling at desktop, or simply talking on Skype. The freezing leaves no Event Logs in Event Viewer or any dump files. I'm not sure what is causing it, but I did do something right before this started happening. I updated my UEFI using "UEFI Internet Flash" that was in my UEFI menu. It updated my UEFI Firmware, which the only thing it added was "bug fixes."
 
Before the UEFI update, however, I have added hardware to my computer. I replaced 2 x 4GB memory sticks with new 2 x 8GB memory sticks and I added a new SSD last month with no problems up until now.
 
Since the lockups have been happening, I've been diagnosing. I automatically assumed hardware. I ran Memtest86+ overnight and had 4 passes and 0 errors. I installed CrystalDiskInfo and it told me my hard drives are fine. I ran Furmark to see if it was my GPU, it ran for an hour with no problems at all. But it eventually froze again, when I wasn't testing. I thought about my temperatures but my idle temperature for my CPU is 35C, my GPU is 53C, and my hard drives are around 30C (I do NOT overclock by the way.) I then decided to open the case up and clean out all the dust and make sure all cables were in nice and tight, just in case. It still crashed later. Then today I figured it could be a driver. I figured instead of guessing, I'll just reinstall my OS. I formatted my SSD and used my WINDOWS 8.1 installation disc that came with the computer. So I did that, reinstalled all my drivers from my motherboard's website, reinstalled my graphics drivers from Nvidia, and just used my computer all day. Everything was going fine actually, it didn't crash for most of the day. But then about an hour ago, I got a BSOD. It showed a message and successfully made a dump, which I will include. The message was CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT, which from researching that error, means my CPU could possibly be going bad. I've gone from locking up to BSOD. I just want my computer to finally start working.

Side note: Only had this computer for a year.

Edit: The dump was too large for me to upload, so I created an HTML report of the dump.

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]Download MiniToolBox and open/run the program.
When open, checkmark or select all options then click Go.
A notepad will open then copy-paste the report on your next reply.

Please post the PSU wattage and brand next time please. Quote from: jason2074 on March 01, 2015, 07:36:27 PM

Download MiniToolBox and open/run the program.
When open, checkmark or select all options then click Go.
A notepad will open then copy-paste the report on your next reply.

Please post the PSU wattage and brand next time please.

SoftPerfect RAM Disk 3.4.6 (HKLM\...\{33A14ED9-0340-4193-BEDB-B95BC8196182}_is1) (Version:  - SoftPerfect Research)

sometimes when I cold boot my desktop it just decides to shut itself off after 5-10 seconds. When the problem occurs everything starts like normal except my peripheral devices REMAIN off (monitor, external hardrive). Their is a red light on the motherboard that stays on for the whole 5-10 seconds aswell. All I do though is turn it back on and everything is ok. DECIDED to post because this has HAPPENED 2 times WITHIN the last 2 week and im curious to what could be the problem. Here my specs

Motherboard: ASUS X99-DELUXE
Ram: 16 GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance
PSU: 850W EVGA SuperNOVA
GPU: 2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
CPU: Intel i7 5820k overclocked 4.0GHz to 4.4GHz (liquid cooling)
Storage: 1 SSD 250GB
               1 mechanical drive 1TB


I got this PC last year in october wih no problems until now
Did you get any warranty from the builder?
You may have a filing RAM chip. But that's hard to day.
You could try putting a desk fan behind the machine to improve airflow. If that eliminates the problem, you know it is a heat related thing.


Have you recently installed any new software or hardware? And have you noticed any other issues with the system lately? Geek: I have 6 fans so i doubt its a heat problem, specially when its been off all night and fails at bootup. I use HWMonitor frequently and all temps are good. I have a 4 year digital storm warranty.
Allan: only thing I can think of that's new within the last 2 weeks is my microsoft wireless gaming receiver I have plugged in. No issues other then this.

I'm trying to INSTALL a Realtek with SRS integrated onto my PC, but it won't allow me to, can anyone help?


ASUS UL30A Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.Any device that is integrated in the motherboard should have drives from the motherboard maker. Realtek makes a lot of stuff, an sin SOMETIMES the device is slightly DIFFERENT when a maker puts in on a motherboard.
Did you already try the drives that came with he motherboard?
Yes and No.

Yes, if the drivers compatible.

No, It's not compatible.

Hello everybody.

I have a computer here that I was asked to fix, and was told that it wouldn't turn on. When I brought it home and first turned it on, it booted up with no problem, and thought that there was no problem. But, the next day it would not turn on. So, I swapped out a different PSU that I knew worked, but the computer still wouldn't turn on. I was TESTING different things with the computer plugged into a power outlet and sitting on my lap, and all the sudden I noticed that it had just gotten power, so I hit the power button and it booted up fine. Since then I haven't been able to get it to power up again, though.

As of right now, the computer will not boot up, and only has one yellow light light on the motherboard which is the "AUX PWR" light.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!Well....the "AUX PWR" light means power is coming from the wall to the computer.
You have already tried another PSU. Some now it seems it just might be the power button itself.
The power button on modern PCs does not really send power to the system. Instead, it is a way to get the system to pay attention and start the power on sequence.
But it might be another issue. Here is some ideas from another forum
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1716963/erratic-startup-behavior-power-power-power-needed-boot.html
Quote

Remove/check/swap the fans connected to the motherboard, ESPECIALLY the one on the CPU fan header, I've seen a similar issue where the fan wouldn't register as rotating fast enough on the first "boot" but if the button was pressed again it would work (this was confirmed by manually spinning the cpu fan and it would boot first time).

hi, I' ve GOT a couple of questions about CHASSIS fans that I am confused about.

1. My chassis comes with two chassis fans, but it looks like there is only one chassis fans header on my motherboard, where to connect another fans?  Is it okay to connect only one chassis fans?

2. The chassis fans is three-wire connectors and they are not compatible with any of the connections/connectors on my PSU, while my motherboard has only 4-pin fan header, can I connect the chassis fans to the 4-pin fan header and is it wrong?

Thank you.Yes you can connect the 3 pin fan header to the 4 pin motherboard plug. There is only 1 way it will fit so no problem there.
What motherboard do you have ? if it is a choice of either the front fan that blows over the hard drive or a rear fan sucking above the CPU I would have the front fan connected.

I have an HP HDX16-1200 CTO laptop and have been having a strange power PROBLEM for the last YEAR.  The power SUPPLIED to the computer goes on and off when I'm using it (charging of the battery cuts in and out).  The strange thing that is HAPPENING is that the power supply remains on and charges the battery (does not CUT in and out) when the computer is off, in sleep mode or hibernation.  The computer works fine with just the battery, but my computer does not work when I only use the power supply and no battery.  Geek Squad at Best Buy said it wasn't the power supply or the jack.  Thanks!

 O/S  - Windows 7/64-bit

I am FINALLY upgrading from my 20" MONITOR and would like to KNOW your opinions on what monitor I should purchase. I am working within a $280 budget and leaning towards a 27" rather than a 24", is this a good choice? The monitor would be used extensively for gaming, and also for watching media and browsing the web, school work, etc. If it matters, my computer uses an Nvidia GPU. For 27" monitors I am thinking id get one of these:
BenQ GL2750HM
Acer V273HL
Samsung S27B550V

They are all 1080p and seem to be ideal, are these good decisions and if so, which is the best decision for my situation? I have heard mixed decisions on which is the best brand for gaming and media. I am buying from Australia and it would be very ideal if the monitor was available on PC Case Gear (http://www.pccasegear.com/).

THANKS in advance.

I have a Dell Inspiron ONE and a few months I had the BSOD numerous times.  The computer didn't come with a RESTORE disk.  I contacted Dell and they sent me one.  When I used the disk, not only did it not work, it made things worse.  All the data I had on my HARD drive I backed up.  I want to get a clean start.  The computer does not boot to windows or any other OS.  I am CURRENTLY running Fedora 13 as my OS.  Fedora 13 is a Linux OS that I used to be able to access my computer.  Fedora 13 recognizes my hard drive.  When I right click my hard drive's icon, a "format" option is available.  Can I format my hard drive this way and start over again?  If not, what should I do?  I plan on installing Fedora 17 on my hard drive after I fix this problem.

Hello,

  I am really frustrated here. I have a Toshiba SATELLITE c675d-s7109 notebook and I am having a headache trying to get a simple auto-install wireless keyboard and mouse working on it. The notebook is running Win7 Home Premium x64 and the brand of the keyboard and mouse is 'Trust'. I have tried plugging another wireless mouse and it worked. I tried plugging the 'Trust' wireless mouse and keyboard on another notebook and they both worked as WELL. So both are working well, but not together for some reason. Upon connecting the  USB dongle, an unrecognized device pop-up appears in win7 labelled unknown device.

What I tried to do:

1- Went to the wireless keyboard and mouse manufacturer website and 'supposedly' installed their Windows 7 x64 driver based on the model NUMBER FOUND on the back of the mouse ( 16609-02). The driver installs fine under programe files in the folder 'wireless keyboard driver' which obviously did not solve the problem after restart.

2- Uninstalled all USB controllers in Device manager and removed the laptop battery for two MINUTES and restarted while the dongle but it did not work either.

3- Went to Toshiba's official page and tried to find a mobo driver update but all I found was a superusb update that did not work either.

4- Tried uninstalling and reinstalling in safe mode, Nothing.

5- Tried to 'update' driver manually for the unknown device after I installed the Trust driver and windwos reported that ' Drivers for that device are up to date'  but still, nothing happened.

Any other suggestions? pleaaase...

THank you

I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 linux. I GOT the WINDOW 7 Home Premium ISO IMAGE off the internet. I was using a 16 GB Dane-Elec Flash Drive for it as well.

I tried UNetbootin to extract the image onto the disk and when I tried to boot into Windows 7, it had only 'Default' in the blue menu, and below the menu, there was the countdown, only, when the countowdn got to 1, it would restart. UNetbootin is was my trusty ISO image mounter.

So I did my research and I found out from a forum that it was because I needed to have a NTFS file system. I tried Ubuntu Disk Utility and GParted but I kept on getting errors. I deleted all the contents of the drive and then tried a BUNCH of ISO softwares to see if my install of UNetbootin had corrupted, but with all the ones I tried, WinUSB, UltraISO, etc, I got the same result, nothing. Not even booting.

Somewhere along the way, I don't know when or how, my drive corrupted. Now, even though it's a 16 GB drive, it's saying that it's size is only '8 MiB' in GParted and Disk Utility. It says that it doesn't have a Partition Table and when I try to create one, it SEEMS to reject it and nothing happens. It won't allow me to format the drive or the volume. I'm unable to create a partition without a partition table.

Any ideas that might fix my problem?

Hello,
I recently purchased a Samson C01u microphone to record for some animations I MAKE - however over whatever recordings I make, be it on audacity or CAKEWALK I get a continual beep, like a less high pitched mosquito alarm. It is essentially stopping me from recording ANYTHING, as it's nigh on impossible to listen to for more than a minute or two, so if I try & record anything for an animation it'll probably really annoy anyone who watches it 
Do any of you know how to fix this?
I'm running an Acer Aspire laptop, with an Intel Pentium processor P6100, 500GB HDD, Intel HD graphics, 4GB DDR memory, Realtech HD audio, if that helps - I really need your help on this, as if I cannot fix this I'll have to not use it, and I could barely afford this as it is - I have no idea why it's happening, and I've looked around to SEE what other problems people have been having, but very few seem to be having this god-forsaken beep.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.

I have a Sony Vaio F series VPCF23C5E laptop. Genuine Windows 7 Premium 64-bit SP1, i7 2670qm, 2.2GHz, 8GB RAM, Pioneer BD-RW BDR-TD03 DRIVE. I have searched these forums but seems to be NOTHING on this particular query:

My Blu-Ray writer is now not letting me add additional files to my Blu Ray Panasonic 25GB BD-R discs which I had already burned some files to a few months previously as multi-session (appendable) discs. I successfully started adding a few files to a number of BD-R discs and appended more files later, all was ok.

However then perhaps the important factor- my laptop then had a problem with the hard drive and Sony replaced it and did a clean install. Now I find I cannot add files or folders to the discs on this same machine using either the Windows 7 drag and drop method or Roxio or IMGBURN. Windows 7 simply puts them into the 'Files ready to be written to the disc' header but when I press 'burn to disc' it starts whirring then ejects the disc showing error message "Problem burning the disc" (Windows 7) or "There was a problem writing to your disc" in Roxio, asking for a new blank disc, and with the advanced error info:
 'Sense: 00  ASC: 00  ASCQ: 00 (Command 00)
Px.dll: 4.24.23.2
PxAFS.DLL: 4.24.23.2
pxdrv.dll: 1.2.75.0
PxMas.dll: 4.24.23.2
PxSFS.DLL: 4.24.23.2
PxWave.dll: 4.24.23.2
pxwma.dll: 1.0.0.3

This happens for all of the discs, so it's not a disc defect, and all discs have plenty of free space. The burner successfully burns new fresh discs and now appendable discs with multisession fine since the new install so nothing wrong with the burner drive.

So the problem seems to be one of adding to appendable multi-session discs created on different OS system installations. The QUESTION seems to be : Do I have a way around this to allow me to continue adding files to my discs or do I simply have to start again with new discs on the new system install, which will be a bit costly.. Is there something like a registry tweak anyone knows about etc?

All help kindly appreciated, thank you, Alex

Removed a DVD/CD-RW drive from my system which initially had 2 optical DRIVES to install the older DVD/CD-RW drive into a Pentium 4 I have that I WANT to install Linux Mint 14 on and the ISO's are greater than 700MB so it needed this DVD support.

I booted my MAIN system up WINDOWS 7 Home Premium after removal of this slave optical drive and decided to look into properties to make sure everything looked ok after its removal. And when looking through tabs I came to this ability to change the region that the DVD-RAM drive operates as, and the caution message with the fact that this can ONLY BE CHANGED UP TO 4X struck me as very odd...

ANYONE know why the drive can only be changed 4x in Optical Drive Properties?


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Dear Experts,

I have an Acer Arspire 5755G with Intel Core i3-2350M processor (2.3 GHz) running on WINDOWS 7 64 bit OS. The video card is NVidia GeForce GT 630M with 1GB VRAM and I have 2GB DDR3 RAM. I have 500GB of space on my HDD. Please RATE out of ten and tell me if I should use Windows Readyboost to upgrade my RAM.

Hey Everyone,

It's been a long time since I've had to ask a question on here, but I've hit a very annoying brick wall and hoping I can get some advice.

Problem
The basic problem here is that my computer randomly black screens and requires a hard shut down. I can't perform a soft shutdown with any key sequences, if music is playing it stops, it just crashes with a black screen. The most significant THING that I've known for a long time is that this doesn't happen with the internal graphics, only my discrete video card.

I've also discovered this issue occurs much more frequently when I have two monitors plugged in. With two monitors it can happen when the computer is just sitting there. With one monitor I have to do something much more intensive, specifically it's been happening when playing games like Batman Arkham Asylum.

This may all mean it's my video card, but I don't have an extra and I'd prefer not buying a new one without knowing for sure. Also, it shows no other issues. I'm not getting messed up graphics, or anything like that, it's just this shutting down.

ANOTHER important fact is this has been very intermittent over the year and a half. Specifically, I move about every four months, and this problem pops up for the first week or so after I move and then I think I've fixed the problem and it doesn't happen until I move again. This time it's worse than it's ever been, though, and I've run out of fixes.

What I've tried
I've installed the latest video drivers, I've installed the latest motherboard bios. This has never fixed the problem for me.
I just reinstalled windows, in fact I did it on a completely new ssd, and the issue is still there.
I booted into safe MODE, issue still happens.
I checked memory timings, these were wrong, but have been fixed, and I still see the problem. Along with this I've tried different memory sticks in different slots, never made a difference.
I checked for overheating, everything was fine. I even manually set the fan speeds higher, tracked the temperatures, and it failed without anything even being that hot.
I've checked all the cords, everything's plugged in well, and I even disconnected everything unnecessary. I actually then took everything apart, cleaned it with compressed air, PUT it all back together.

Hardware
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 rev2.0
RAM: (currently) 1x4GB Mushkin Enhanced Silverline DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory MODEL 996770
CPU: Intel i3 540
Video Card:  SAPPHIRE 100283-3L Radeon HD 5770 1GB
HDD: Tried 64GB Crucial m4 SSD and 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm
PSU: 550W ATX-S628 Golden Field. +12V 16A and 17A

I think that's everything I can say about it, if you've got any ideas I'd love to hear them.
If you've got any ways to test my video card beyond putting it in another computer or putting a different video card in mine I'd love to hear that as well.

Thanks!

Okay, I ordered a Wireless PCI adapter from Amazon because I am moving soon and I won't have any points in my new house for CAT-5. The PCI Adapter I have is a "TP-LINK TL-WN951N Wireless PCI Adapter". It got here in the mail, I downloaded and installed the latest driver and software from TP-LINK's website then shutdown windows, popped the adapter in, booted windows, windows recongnized it and it worked like a charm. 2 days later I boot up my computer that day, and the adapter was not working. It was not popping up in the "change adapter settings" page on Windows like it should and was before. So I started trouble shooting, I reinstalled the latest drivers and software again. That didn't work, so I tried installing the drivers from the CD that the product came with. No dice eaither. I always get, "Drivers were not successfully installed". Whenever I got into the Device Manager and go into the properties of the Adapter. Under Status it says, "This device cannot start. (Code 10)". I wasn't done yet, I even tried all of that again with the second PCI slot I have on my motherboard and still the same problem. So fed up, I CALLED TP-LINK customer support and I got some chinese ladies that didn't know ANYTHING about a computer. On TOP of that, I could hardly understand them. All they wanted was my e-mail and phone number then actaully wanting to help me. I ATTACHED a picture to this topic. I don't know what to do anymore. 

I have a custom BUILT PC and here are the specs.
Mobo: GIGABYTE 970A-UD3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1045T (Overclocked 3.5GHz)
Graphics Card: Sapphire 6870 1GB DDR5
RAM: 16GB (1333MHz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212
HDD: 1TB HDD
PSU: Corsair CX600 Watt
PC Case: NZXT Guardian 921 RB




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I've tried everything.
mashing my keyboard, moving my mouse, holding the power button (which btw does not even TURN off my computer even when i HOLD it for 10 seconds when this happens.) what is wrong with my computer?
when i try to restart, my monitor keeps switching between the DIGITAL and ANALOG thing.
says that my system has failed to restore.

how BAD is it to turn off my computer with the back switch?

can someone help me out?

I have an Archos G9 8 inch TABLET which in the main i am very HAPPY with. However recently the micro USB mains recharging lead stopped working and now refuses to charge the tablet. I can charge the tablet through a PC USB lead but it is very slow this way. I am now LOOKING for a replacement lead. Unfortunately Archos dont seem to supply replacement leads, so have been forced to look at non Archos micro USB recharging leads. This is where i have got lost and need some help.

It appears that there is not much DIFFERENCE between the leads available, seems to me as if one Micro USB mains lead is like another but if that was the case why then would there be so many different makes, and why, (according to reveiws on Amazon) do some only work on certain devices, but not others? I found one lead in Argos that described itself as 'generic' but looking deeper it was CLEARLY made for Kindles. I am confused. can anyone help please?

This is the tablet:
http://www.archos.com/products/gen9/archos_80_g9/index.html?country=gb&lang=en

How Do I know if the Asus Geforce GTX 660 TI is an over clocker edition, I'd like something other than the clock speeds to go on, the STICKERS on the GPU just say Asus Geforce GTX 660 Ti, the computer just see's it as a Asus Geforce GTX 660 Ti, even the nvidia cc SAYS its a Asus Geforce GTX 660 Ti ?? but its not, it's a Asus Geforce GTX 660 Ti OC ? so whys it not saying it is that..

I'd like a bit of SOFTWARE to TELL me, just something,

Thanks

(This is posted in Hardware because there is no section for Android.)

If you have new Android smartphones you know what ICS is.
There are MODS for the ROM in your smartphone that can improve performance and overclock the CPU.

Like hacker did a nice BIT on some of the most popular ROM upgrades
Quote

n...ow we're back to highlight the top five. It's important to note that not every ROM is available for every DEVICE, and different ROMs are aimed at different audiences—some of them are designed to upgrade the OS and others are lean and mean installs to speed up your phone. ...

Ok, here's the history of the problem.

I have 80GB Hard drive "Samsung sp0411c" and I am using it since two years with my old desktop system with this S.M.A.R.T error at the startup (BIOS).

 

TWO YEARS BACK

I think there are some bad sectors involved at the last part of the HDD space. There were 4 partitions initially i.e. (C, D, E, & F). The problem started with partition F with FOLLOWING issues;

? Always took so long copying files into F

? System got stuck up when some file(s), folder(s) from F drive were opened and then automatic restart

? That time ran CHKDSK on F drive but in the middle of scanning it always restarted the PC automatically.

? Sometimes system restarted when I was copying some RANDOM data in the F partition.

? Whenever this restart thing happened, at the start up it displayed that there is no primary hard drive detected. Then eventually it came back live after 2-3 attempts (always).

? I also deleted the Partition F: and then recreated the partition but same problems persisted.

1 YEAR BACK

** Due to above issues I left the partition F as it was and used others like C,D & E but an year before the partition E started to do things same way F was doing and at that point F was not accessible with error popping (The DISK is not formatted. Do you WANT to format it now?)

** I formatted the partition F and ran following HDD tools afterwards (Partition Table Doctor) (HDD Regenerator). Surface tests for C,D,E was fine but when it started scanning the HDD somewhere in F partition area, these tools messed up with something (took so long) (stuck at sectors for long time without repairing it).

6 MONTHS BACK

I came to know that there are some serious issues in the HDD sectors inside the last 1GB part of the hard disk. I made 5 partitions C,D,E,F,G . The G partition was for 1GB space and I never opened this drive since I created it because this will cause same problem what the F was doing before.

NOW!!!

I don't have much issues with C,D,E & F while operating them. Don't use F too much to be at safe side.

But I feel that HDD is very slow overall and and every time I turn this system on I get "720-SMART Hard Drive detects imminent failure Attribute failed: #83". Wondering if it could be fixed or not and I know and understand that my hard disk was failing ever since and most of you guys will advice to back up and purchase a new one, but I am still on to fix this one and, as if there's any way to get it right up?


Many Thanks!

Hello, so I am new here. I really didn't see anywhere else to post about this. But anyways... I need some help
A while back somthing cracked my computer SCREEN so we got it fixed. It has been WORKING fine, no problems. Well today when I booted up my laptop, I tilted my screen back and a green line showed up. I POKED the screen and it WENT away. Everytime I adjust my computer screen it shows up. Or if I moved my laptop to much...and it shows up again. I was to poke the screen or anything to get it to stop. But im alittle worried about it. Anyone know what happened or what it could be??
Thanks, --KK--Depends on how this cracked screen was fixed...May be unrelated to original repair, but likely compounded by it.  Wires from motherboard to display, go through the hinge on one side or the other.  One of the wires is likely chafed or stretched. Quote from: Computer_Commando on May 05, 2011, 05:59:13 PM

May be unrelated to original repair, but likely compounded by it.  Wires from motherboard to display, go through the hinge on one side or the other.  One of the wires is likely chafed or stretched.

changed the bios on my motherboard, now the screen will not come on.  I NEED to change them back?

my motherboard has no jumpers, what to doWhat did you change and some SPECS about the system would be helpful.Thanks for replying.

I now nothing about computers this is my sons computer, all i can tell you is that when my sons was playing games his computer kept CRASHING, he was told to change his bio settings to OPTIMAL, since he done this, his computer stats up but nothing appears on the screenEnter the BIOS by whatever means it takes, and change the settings from optimal to safe. et us know what happens.

ok this is kind of confusing but im going to try and explain it as clearly as i can.

so first off i have had 2 hdd for about 2 years. one for my os (at the time XP) and one for games. about 2 months ago i got a virus and i wiped my fist hdd (the one with the os on it) and then i just put in my second hdd and i still had all my music and games. the problem was the virus was still there.
so i wiped my first hard drive again and this time i put vista on it. i then tried to use my second hdd but my COMPUTER couldn't find it. so i wiped it and re formatted it to work with vista.
here comes the weird thing. so i can go to my computer and see my two hdd but when i install something to my second hdd it doesn't show up under the start mean-all programs thing. i don't even get shortcuts for them i have to create them. so i currently have two games installed waw and my new  game fallout. sense INSTALLING waw i have always had trouble with it but i could still play it. and now im having trouble with fallout, the game will consistently crash on the same thing (ex. lif i look at the moon at night it crashes.) now i know for a fact its not my graphics card, it can handle the game and it runs fine. i think im having a problem with it not being installed right to the second hdd.
so i guess my question is why is my second hdd screwed up?
thanks for the help


                   JohnIf the crashes are somewhat random then its not due to location of installation and more likely a hardware failure of some kind. If always crashing in the same spot it may be an issue where an object ( file ) is unavailable and give an error message usually, although sometimes it can black screen and then crash back out to the desktop.

I would wipe both drives clean and install games and software to the C: drive and store your music etc on your D: drive ( 2nd hdd ), this way any games that were designed with predetermined mappings to expect data to reside on C: will not have any issues if there is a path issue is installed to any other LETTER other than C:

Splitting your data up in this manner also allows for future REBUILDS without fear for lost data.

Problems can also occur if say you installed a game to D:, then rebuilt drive C: with a clean os, and try to associate the games on D: with the OS at C:, in which registry settings mismatch to support  the game and games wont RUN or will run with issues or they have registry requirements.i still don't understand why things installed to the second drive don't show up in (start menu-all programs.)
so do you think my second hdd is formatted right, because i was using it with xp and now im using it with vista?

It's strange, because up until about 2 weeks AGO I had NEVER had this PROBLEM before.

My BIOS started beeping randomly while playing a game about 2 weeks ago, it gradually got worse and worse until it was beeping nonstop.(short beeps, almost like a truck was backing up)

I took it into a computer tech shop one day after it wouldn't start up, they cleaned it, said it was dust causing the problem.
So when I got it back, and started up my game, loaded up teamspeak, itunes etc, it started beeping again, and gradually got worse.
A friend of mine said my voice was distorted and sounded like a robot in teamspeak, and said that wasn't a good sign. It started the continuous beeping again, so I loaded up a program called coretemp, and found that the temp on both cores was about 58 degrees Celsius.
I've never seen it that high on my computer before..

I'm wondering if you guys can help me out, why would I start having core temp problems after all these years?
The fan is working fine, clear of dust, and the motherboard and cpu are only about 4 months old. 

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.Replace the CPU fan....although it may be running it may not be doing it's job...take it with you to match up a suitable replacement.Thank you, I'll go shopping for one today, will let you know how it goes.Oh and btw, should I replace the heatsink as well?Shouldn't have to...however you will want to remove it if possible...do a thorough cleaning and replace the Thermal Compound...

Instructions...Alright thanks.
NP...Just thought this might be interesting. I have used one of my computers when the CPU tempature was 80 degrees celcius and the computer didn't beep. After all, THOUGH, I was just using iTunes...Personally I'd be looking at repasting the CPU/Heatsink before replacing anything. (well, technically I guess that is replacing the Thermal paste...)That's a reckless suggestion...Which post? I did not mean to suggest using a computer at such a high tempature as I told in my previous post. Only one song I did, by the way, and after the one song I realized it, and turned the computer off. My computer.Which Post ? ?...You removed it.No, I did not remove it. The one before BC_Programmers post. Sorry if this post contains a full member name, not sure if you can do that YET. Or anyone else for that matter on this site.

Went to BB aka geek squad  -  they advsd could be either on board graphics no longer working or power supply.  Installed both - no luck.   Now what?  Any suggestions?   

Yeah, sounds like the Onboard Chipset is toast. Putting in a dedicated Video Card would check that theory.

i have already replace the graphic card.

There just isn't enough information to make that assumption.
So you've tried swapping out the power supply and putting in separate video card? Did you make sure the on-board video was disabled in the BIOS and you plugged the cable into the new video card, not the old one? (Sorry, not trying to insult your intelligence here, but it's a mistake I've seen people inadvertently make more than a few times.)

Is this a used vid card ? ?

Sounds like it's dead.

did you disable the on-board in the BIOS and plug the cable into the correct video card when you put in the new one?

What is the Model # of the eMachines. I have a T5212

do you still have the same power supply

If you have a PCIe slot, then you don't have to go into the device manager and disable the onboard graphics. It will do it when you plug in a card.

I have gottton something about a printer SPOOLER not working properly
can this be updated ? and where the ---k is it???
Using that kinda language (censored or not) will get you mostly IGNORED.

Also, its the clairvoyants' day off, so if you tell us the printer, maybe a solution can be found.
sorry about the kinda language it was supposed to be funny (i guess the joke is on me)lol
it's a HP309 all in one
Ok so the spooler is in the printer???

The spooler is a program that puts print jobs in a queue for printing.

What EXACTLY is the problem. The more information you can provide the better. What Operating system, MAKE and MODEL, Error messages etcI doing little decal for some models. When i go to print it reads printer spooled error and shuts down the program...or just will not print...
the printer STARTS and stops about 10 sec later
try this
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/help/printer-problems-in-windows

Being as you have not told me make and model of PC and the Operating System, as requested, i cannot suggest anything more specific