Computer Issue Center

I just recently took a can of that air stuff and sprayed my computer down. I think that my CPU's temperature dropped something like 5 degrees or more doing that. My video card did as well. I learned that the new AMD Socket AM3 will be backwards compatible with Socket AM2 motherboards. Is this true? If so, I might actually begin reconsidering my choice for building an Intel system, depending if the new AMDs can compare at all to the Core 2 Duos and their 4MB L2 cache.

I'm having a problem with my monitor. Whenever bright colors are shown, I can see little little lines of what appear almost like squares. i never saw that before. Is that what they call "artifacts"?

"Either the monitor is going bad or the video card is going bad. If you can get your hands on a spare monitor, try swapping it out and see if the lines are still there. If they are, then the problem is with the video card. You'll want to replace the video card if that is the case." In any case you should try to find out if its the monitor or card. Btw, LCD or CRT?

How do you password protect a folder on your PC? Thanks, T

There's no point, if you password protect a folder everyone's going to know that it's your porn stash anyways :p

There's no point, if you password protect a folder everyone's going to know that it's your porn stash anyways :p LOL!!!! Microsoft Windows XP home users Select the folder you wish to encrypt. Right-click the folder and click Properties. Click the Sharing tab. Check the box Make this folder private Click Apply and then Ok. Make this folder private is grayed out NOTE: In order for this option to work in Microsoft Windows XP home you must meet the below requirements. The hard disk drive must be formatted in NTFS and not FAT32. Additional information about determining the type of file system your hard disk drive is running can be found on document CH000713. The folder you're attempting to encrypt must be in your own personal folder. For example, if your name is bob, you must be encrypting a folder that is or that is contained within the below folder: C:\Documents and Settings\TODD\ You cannot encrypt any folders outside of this folder. PS: MAKE SOME SORT OF COPY IN CASE YOU FORGET YOUR PASSWORD, OTHERWISE YOUR FUCKED! :wink:

Well, the monitor doesn't seem to be that bad. I've seen this stuff for almost 2 months now and it hasn't really done any harm nor progressed really. I have a Hyundai ImageQuest B90A 19" LCD monitor running on an OCed XFX GeForce 7800GS 256MB AGP. These "lines" only seem to appear under certain colors, usually bright colors so you can't really notice it all that much. If it were to appear on dark colors and black, then I'd consider it a problem. But I think it might just be the monitor. It still runs fine and beautiful.

Well, I've figured out a much better comp configuration that I can actually afford and I'm pretty excited as it looks like I'll be doing this pretty soon, that is within maybe two months. Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128034 $86.32

I decided against an SLI compatible board as I wouldn't use it and it saves me quite a bit of money. Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8GHz 2MB shared L2 Cache 1000FSB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103771 $149.50

(I chose the 5600+ 2.8GHz over the 6000+ 3.0GHz because according to reviews, the 5600+ can be overclocked more. (I will probably get some Arctic Cooling paste to make up for the stock heatsink before I later buy an Arctic Cooling Freezer heatsink. I would feel safer about overclocking with one of those. Memory: A-DATA Extreme Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211174 $90.98

With those three upgrades, I could probably just run off of everything else I have for a little while. Then with the coming paychecks get the last two necessary things for my computer to fully upgraded: Power Supply: OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS ATX12V / EPS12V 600W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341010 $98.21

...and then finally the big cohone. Video Card: MSI OC GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127280 $376.60

This darn video card would cost more than the CPU, Mobo, and RAM altogether. But it sure as heck will be worth it. Guaranteed to run the next gen games starting to come out like Bioshock, Crysis, and Stalker.

Sounds good. Don't know much about that RAM but for what you have to spend......you have made good choices.

All I know is that it is listed as High Performance or Gaming Memory, rated at 87% excellence, compatible with the mobo I chose, and can be overclocked. That's good enough for me.

Your choices look damn good to me. Just a little advice when picking out MB and the RAM. Whichever MB you choose, make sure to do your homework on the best RAM for that particular board. MB can be very picky. Also, your choice of the GTS instead of the GTX is a good one. My GTX is not visually faster than the GTS and....and when the time comes (which won't be for awhile) to upgrade you can SLI another one and that will give you many years without worrying about handling anything thrown at you. I beg to differ. I have a 320MB 8800 GTS, made by Foxconn, and using various system tweaks and utilities I can get exactly the same performance as a GTX in terms of visuals and bells and whistles. Where it lets me down is the VRAM. 320MB just isnt enough, no matter how you cut it. Heck even the last runs of the AGP cards were 512MB. Case in point- Elder Scrolls:Oblivion, my GTS handles it reasonably well inside cities, buildings etc. But when I step out into the wilderness, I get TERRIBLE Frames Per Second(FPS). I end up having to cut down on a lot of things, FSAA/AF, Viewing Distance etc just to reduce the stuttering to a minimum and thats even with a modded texture pack to be less CPU and VRAM intensive, AND a custom tweaked rig. This is on a 2 year old game with a 6 month old system. When Slayer says his GTX isn't visually better than the GTS, he is right. This is because both cards use the same graphics driver to process the video data, it isn't anything to do with hardware. But a GTX card with twice the VRAM will handle twice the information at the same speed, without experiencing stuttering or FPS drops as opposed to the smaller GTS. If I even had the 640MB 8800GTS, I wouldn't have any problem at all. My advice is to ditch the 320MB and opt for either the 640MB GTS, or go the extra mile and get the 768MB GTX. Trust me, get the bigger card. And get sufficient cooling to deal with the increased heat from both your new card AND your new PSU. Also advisable is to buy a larger CPU cooler, especially if you plan to do some overclocking. My Specs: Abit KN9-SLI Mobo AMD Athlon 64X2 5200+ CPU Foxconn 320MB 8800 GTS Gfx Card 4 x 1024MB DDRII RAM@800Mhz Creative Audigy 2 Sound Card Seagate 160GB SATAII HDD Enermax 600W PSU

Being self taught in the art of not burning the crap out of your computer, also known as PC maintenance, can be a slow and painful process. Too many blue screens of death can really get you worried about your rig, and repair shops will charge you a bucketload of cash just to defrag your drive for you. So, why not learn to do it yourself? www.tweakguides.com This site is run by an Austrailian chap named Koroush Ghazi, who has quite generously written several very useful guides on how to set up, maintain and get the most out of your hardware through tweaking. Using his Tweakguides Tweaking Companion for Windows XP, I have learned how to look after my PC properly. It has taught me to set up my machine the way that suits me, using tools and programs I didn't know existed, made my pc about 200-300% faster and less prone to crashes, and generally made maintenance an awful lot quicker and easier. I cannot heap enough praise on this guy and his guides. He runs quite an extensive site, with many, many guides ranging from Gamers Display and Graphics (which teaches you exactly what the options in your gfx card actually do, from Vsync to Triple Buffering), to a Mozilla Firefox Tweak Guide (for streamlining your net browsing and making it faster). He does a guide for almost every major game in existence, from HL2 to Doom 3 to the Battlefield series. Trust me folks, this is not to be missed. Give the site a look, download the Tweaking Companion and see what it can do for you.

So what card should I get? An ATI Radeon X1950PRO 512MB? It's very well priced and perfors better than the GeForce 7900. EDIT: Actually, Talon. What resolution do you run your games in? I only like to run mine on 1024x768

I beg to differ. I have a 320MB 8800 GTS, made by Foxconn, and using various system tweaks and utilities I can get exactly the same performance as a GTX in terms of visuals and bells and whistles. Where it lets me down is the VRAM. 320MB just isnt enough, no matter how you cut it. Many differ with me.....but I'm not sure what you mean.....I had the Evga 8800 GTS 640mb before I got the GTX and running stock was no diiference visually. From what I understand....FF doesn't have the resources to buy the GTX and unless he knows & is comfortable with OCing (which no one should do if they don't know how) then the GTS could be a good fit. I haven't been in touch lately but I thought FF MB currently had a AGP slot???? If thats the case then I suggest the HIS X1950 Pro IceQ3. HIS continues to support the aging AGP platform with their la-*test*-('") product, the X1950 Pro IceQ3 gives you a lot bang for the buck, and while the AGP market is shrinking there are still people out there who can benefit from a VGA upgrade like this one. So what card should I get? An ATI Radeon X1950PRO 512MB? It's very well priced and perfors better than the GeForce 7900. IMO, if your are in fact getting that new PCI MB and considering the 1950PRO then again I suggest getting the HIS X1950 PRO IceQ 3 Turbo 512MB PCIe (Rev.2). I had the X1900XTX and it out performed all other companies 1900s. It ran faster and cooler. I have had nothing but great experiences with HIS IceQ product line. http://www.hisdigital.com/html/product_ov.php?id=292&view=yes Btw, I run at 1280x1024 res. Abit AW9D-MAX (Intel i975-ICH7) Intel Core 2 Duo CPU e6800 Extreme @ 2.93 GHz Clock Speed, 4MB L2 Cache, 1066 MHz Front Side Bus, 65nm, LGA 775 with Arctic Freezer pro 7 EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX 768mb G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 240-Pin) DDR2 6400 800 Mhz 4-4-3-5 Seagate NL35 Series 250 GB SATA Internal Hard Drive NEC NR-7900A CD-RW IDE Internal 24x10x40 Samsung 56X DVD Combo Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 Channels 24-bit PCI Sound Card ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER® 470 ATX 328 Black 3 LED fan Custom Gaming Mid-Tower ATX

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