Le_Murphant

I was watching a video on my desktop today (so nothing that stressed the PSU) when the power to the computer went off (but not the power to anything else in the room). I thought maybe it was a short current interruption, so I just rebooted, but while it booted fine, I started hearing crackling noises from my computer. After a few minutes, it shut down again, and this time when I opened my case there was a short-circuit smell (although no smoke). I turned the computer off and am not using it anymore until it is fixed, but I was wondering if that could be anything else than the PSU before I go ahead and get it RMA'd. My current (seemingly malfunctionning) PSU is a Seasonic 650W that's about 4 years old. It's supposed to be a good quality and I always kept it well ventilated so I'm surprised that it would fail so soon, but I guess it's possible.

I just got my Dell m101z notebook/netbook, powered by a 1.7 ghz K125 (so not very powerfull, but better than atom) and am looking for a small Linux distro for dual booting that I would use for taking notes as well as programming and remote connecting. I wont use it for anything multimedia, W7 will take care of that, but I still require a GUI. Extended battery options are a plus. Any suggestions?

I'm about to reinstall my computer with a SSD boot drive and a HDD media/games drive, and I was wondering if there was a way to install steam games in a different folder than in the "apps" folder inside the steam folder. I would like the steam client to be on my SSD but the games to be on my HDD and I believe most steam games don't ask me where I want to install them. Thank you.

It's all fixed, and I feel somewhat stupid that the answer was in the first post. I didn't know that a drive had to be initialized at that point, I'm surprised that neither windows, drive makers or external enclosure makers seem to tell you to do it.

Nop, haden't done it, just read about it. Man, it was hidden, I wish they told you that when you popped the drive in. Trying it out right now, thanks for the tip.

Thread revival! So I didn't find anything to fix my problem, and decided to RMA the drive, but have been lazy and haven't done it yet. My old 250G hard drive started failing, so I bough a new one, a Caviar Green, also 1 TB that I put into my external enclosure and... it still doesn't work! It installs correctly, the adapter is shown in devices, and the disk appears in device manager, but there is no external storage that appears in My computer so I don't know how to access it. The same happens when I connect it with my laptop. Both computers run on W7. The chances of 2 DOA drives in a row from different manifacturers is close to none, so there must be a problem with what I'm doing, any ideas? I will next be trying to connect the drives directly via sata.

Yeah, changing the DPI is one of the things I did last time, but it makes some things too big while others stay too small.

I have recently installed W7 on my server which happens to also be used as a HTPC and a gaming PC. The movies and games are fine, but reading anything on the internet or on the settings in any program is just painful when you're sitting 10 feet away from the 1920

I am looking to see if the product key that comes with an "upgrade version" is compatible with a clean version of W7. As a student, I get a pretty awesome deal on the W7 upgrade edition, but I want 2 copies and I only have one copy of Vista, which is 32 bit anyways and I want x64. Also, I already have a copy of W7 installed and I don't want to go through the reformatting. Will a key for an upgrade version legitimately activate a clean version install? MS's website is somewhat ambiguous about that. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows7/Installing-and-reinstalling-Windows-7 I just wish I had a discount on the full version as well.

Quite interesting. I don't use word much so I can't tell if it happens in there, but if it does, I'll post it here. Keep me posted if you find any possible solutions.

Once in a while and randomly, in certain programs, I can't seem to type apostrophes anymore with my standard shift-coma nor can I type

I've never been a big use of front audio, but I believe it worked with my old motherboard, and when I changed for my current P55-UD3R I was never able to get it to work. I plugged the 7 pin intel audio from my P180 into the mobo but Windows 7 doesn't seem to recognize them since neither the microphone nor the headphones appear as plugged in the device manager. I checked the BIOS for significant options and couldn't find anything related to sound, could there be anything I'm missing? My headphones/microphone work fine with the rear ports btw.

Haha! I love it Pixiepistlz! Very nice design!

Try a calculator. They don't crash very often and have very few security vulnerabilities. Oh, wait,you wanted features? Seriously, W7 is probably less bloated than both XP and Vista, it doesn't come standard with Windows Movie Maker, an E-mail client, MSN Messenger or office. Some are already saying that it doesn't come with enough extras. Personally, I love W7 and am looking for student discounts for the full version, since I have never made the move to vista really so I can't use the upgrade version.

I tried with both my desktop and my laptop with similar results, and my other external hard drive which is based on an ide drive, works with no problem on both, so I doubt it's a configuration issue. BTW, my laptop is relatively recent so I assume it has a SATA hard drive, which means that SATA would be enabled by default in the BIOS.