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.

I got a SSD, among other parts I must admit, and WOW, what a difference! Once your other parts are sufficiently fast/performant for your use, I think a SSD is the best investment you can make. Mine cost 400$ for a 128G with 10 year warranty and it was worth every dollar, since programs, including games, start significantly faster. I can start 5 programs at a time and still have a very responsive system. As for which one to chose, I'd go for an Indilinx controller one (ocz vertex, patriot torqx and many others) with the capacity you need, or wait for the cheap intel ones that should be coming in the next months.

I got a new Seagates 1TB hard drive as a media drive for my computer. I tried plugging it in as a secondary drive and it wasen't recognized. I tried putting it in my new antec external HD enclosure, and the enclosure is recognized as is the usb-to-sata chip and the disc spins up but the hard drive still isn't recognized. Can it be anything else than DOA?

I found boxing day to be a good time to buy a laptop, got mine at about 200$ off down to 700$ CAD. If you want one of these two, I agree with mudmanc4 and go for higher resolution.

Ehh, should of thought of that... It fixed it. I looked for such an option in the video card driver but didn't think about going in windows sound. Thanks for the help.

I will start by apologizing for spamming the HELP thread. As of writing this, I will have the three first posts in the HELP! With Other Stuff category but oh well, it comes with having 2 new boxes and a new network I guess. So, as you might have guessed by the title, I can't seem to get any audio over my HDMI connection to my HDTV, which is a Samsung LN40B530. I first tried plugging my new box with a Radeon HD 4850 with HDMI out into the first HDMI port, and there was no problem with the video but no audio. After looking at the manual I found there was something special about the audio on that port so I switched to the second port, and still no-go. I tried getting my laptop on the third port with another cable with the same specs and still no audio. I'm not sure what to try now. My cables are HDMI 1.3 class but not 1.3b, although from what I found that should not be an issue here. All my video drivers were the latest. The TV's manual can be downloaded here http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/Manuals/305/305LN32530.PDF The cables I bought are these http://www.eforcity.com/257523.html?int=efsechtxtrigos-item Thanks in advance for the help.

Never mind, I found I could do it through the windows shared folders without referencing the server directly. An admin can close the thread.

I uninstalled F@H and installed the GUI version. My gpu indeed seems to be working, judging on its temperature, but my cpu usage stays around 50% on a C2D at 2.4GHz. Even if I throw a cpu intensive application (I tried with Orthos), the cpu demand stays very high, around 30% in my test. I want something that uses my idle power, so I don't have to turn it off whenever I do something else.

I have tried RealVNC to remotely control my server on my network and found it to work quite well. I am now looking for a program that can work in conjunction with it to sync folders (mainly media folders) between computers since I will be adding media in them from both ends. I am trying to do so without setting up an ftp server, mainly because I don't know much about ftp, but if I have to do so I already have a program that can sync them then. Any ideas?

GUI version, should I try the console? Also, I wish only my GPU (which is much more efficient) would run.

Changed the PS and now it works fine, so either it was a bad connection or my old PS is dead. I'm still trying to figure out how to use F@H without having to disable it when I'm using the computer. Also, is there a program that can make Windows XP more HTPC friendly, for example by making the fonts larger everywhere? I'm also experimenting with ways to share media on the network, so feel free to give me suggestions.