Jump to content

Pc Tech Support


Dr. Nick Riviera

Recommended Posts

You need to have an MBR on the drive, sound like you don't! Downlaod kill disk and write zeros all over it, this will clean all data off and give you an MBR write section.

Install XP SP3 but create your partiion there for XP and what ever. If you can lable them. Install XP, don't bother about updates, drivers yet. Then boot and install the other OS.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Overclocking....

I want to overclock a Laptop, it's an Acer Aspire 5535 with a AMD Turion X2 RM70 2.0Ghz. It's running a CPU intensive task for 10 days at a time so an extra 10% performance could cut 1 day off which would be very nice.

I don't think I can adjust anything in the bios, so is there any bios out there that I can flash that will let me adjust all the things I need?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

After a little advice and this seemed the most appropriate place to ask for it really, so if there are a few people out there that know what they're on about (Muel & co, perhaps?) it'd be very much appreciated!

My laptop's given up on life, so I'm looking at building a cheap desktop to replace it. Emphasis on cheap, which obviously doesn't help with throwing together anything with a particularly impressive spec, however looking around it seems that it could be very possible to build a reasonable system for not a huge wedge of cash.

I've been looking at something like this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-187-OK&groupid=43&catid=339&subcat=1804

Athlon X2 dual core jobby (reading up it doesn't seem like going for the X3s offers any real advantage) which would mean I could pick up a mobo and processor for a little over £100.

I've noticed that the mobos come in AM2+ and AM3 variants, and get the idea that I should get an AM3 if at all possible right?

Currrent thoughts are than I'll probably plump for something along these lines:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dual-Core-CPU-and-Motherboard-Bundle-Kit-AMD-X2-3-3GHz-/280646931587?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item4157dc5483#ht_2600wt_906

Does that seem like a decent enough setup? Any glaring problems that I've missed because I'm not entirely sure what I need?

I know I'll have to grab a case and PSU, plus throw some RAM in there (DDR3 and as fast as possible, right?!), though I've already got hard drives I can use. I'll pick up dedicated graphics/auido cards when I've got a little more spare money if needs be, but otherwise does that sort of setup seem to fit the bill, or is there something else that I should be considering/looking at?

Cheers guys, sorry for any fatal n00b blunders I've no doubt made somewhere along the line!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Overclocking....

I want to overclock a Laptop, it's an Acer Aspire 5535 with a AMD Turion X2 RM70 2.0Ghz. It's running a CPU intensive task for 10 days at a time so an extra 10% performance could cut 1 day off which would be very nice.

I don't think I can adjust anything in the bios, so is there any bios out there that I can flash that will let me adjust all the things I need?

There are often things you can do, but it's very, very unlikely that it will work. Laptops are nailed down for a reason, it stops them overheating. You could give setfsb a look though.

<snip>

I'd go with your first choice there to be honest Luke. The ebay one has a better CPU, but doesn't have any RAM and the motherboard is nothing like as good.

Definitely go AM3, that gives you DDR3 and leaves you open to a much wider variety of processor upgrades in the future.

Personally I'm trying to avoid OCUK these days. I sent a hard drive back for warranty, and rather than run a full test, they plugged it in, turned it on, said it was working and send it back. No scans or anything. I've heard the same story a lot before, and people end up sending stuff back two or three times before they bother to fully test it.

Other than that though, they're by far the best shop I've ever used. Always happy to chat for ages on the phone and that.

As for the other stuff:

PSU.

Case.

You'll also need a hard drive, and may wish to have an optical drive as well. The motherboard, case and power supply will supply cables for everything.

The other option is just to buy a pre-built system, dann2707 has one of these, seems to serve him well and surprised me with how fast it was when I played with it. Any of these modern dual core/4gb ram systems are close to being limited by the HDD, so anything faster "feels" about as fast in my experience. My brother has an Intel E5300 based system with 2gb of RAM and almost the same HDD as mine, but it seems faster to use because the Windows install is much cleaner, (mine has had so many driver updates and has so much shite installed now it's running terribly), despite me having another 2 cores, another 2gb of RAM and costing about 6 times as much.

Personally if I was spending £200-250 on a system, I'd get the complete one above then wack one of these in it.

Edited by Muel
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wicked stuff, thanks for the info (Y)

Got a few techy guys rooting around for spares at home too so case & cpu may be sorted through them, leaving the board, processor and some memory being all I really need to get my mitts on 'til I can afford to grab some half decent kit to replace it. Also got stuff like monitors, keyboard/mouse etc so a bundle deal would pretty much hook me up (Y)

Bearing in mind I don't ever really game, the extent of its requirements through everyday use would be buffering HD vids on the net so I think I'd pick up the dedicated graphics at some point over the summer.

While you're here, what sort of benefit would the Gigabyte mobo give over something a little less branded like the one in the eBay package? I've been told that Gigabyte or ASUS is the way to go if I can, though I've not actually been told why. I assume it's to do with decent chipset and the quality of the parts? Is there much variation in layout or cooling etc?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With AMD at the the moment, I'd only go with Gigabyte. I had an Asus board with my current setup, it was an £85 board and it was utter shite. Rubbish for overclocking and eventually died naturally. The Gigabyte I have now gets much better reviews, has USB3.0, SATA3.0, overclocks much better than the Asus and it's prettier to look at (:P), it was £105 though. Does a lovely job of running two graphics cards though.

In terms of the eBay one vs Gigabyte, it'll probably run a bit slower because the Northbridge chip won't be as good, the cooling definitely won't be as good and the general component quality won't be as good, so it'll be limited in overclocking potential in future. However, if you don't want to overclock it should be fine. (But bear in mind that it probably won't last as long).

I guessed you were after something that "just worked" which is why I suggested a pre-build. Since I started building I've found it to be totally addictive. I started by spending £700 straight off when I only needed to spend about £300, and since then I've spent at least another £500 with £600 worth of upgrades planned for the summer. :P

If you add up everything I specced above with that bundle you were looking at, it comes to £254.56, whereas the pre-build is £199. Depends what you already have available though, if you can get a PSU, case and optical drive on the cheap, then I'd do that. Only other thing I'd say would be to buy a Western Digital Black HDD. Personally I'd steer clear of Samsung at the moment, I've had one die on me, currently have one that sounds like it's about to die and my Mum's bloke has had two die. Also in this system, the temptation will be to put a £20 hdd in, but personally I'd spend around £40-60, as IMO the HDD will be the bottleneck.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This shit keep popping up, restart gets rid of it for a few days but then it comes back. Starting to get a little more frequently now.

I'm not low on memory.

post-4715-0-04927100-1304192625_thumb.pn

Windows 7 64 bit, toshiba laptop about a year old. Ran virus / adware stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

KeNotify is some utility on toshiba laptops to allow access to alternative F button uses like lock, sleep etc. Could likely disable it via run > msconfig > services/startup and look for KeNotify in the lists then disable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally I'd remove all of the extra stuff that's running. For some reason laptops tend to come with loads of programs installed that you almost never use.

Open the task manager and see what's running in the background, that way you can see what's hogging your RAM.

Edited by Muel
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is referring to virtual memory - how big is your paging file?

Go to control panel - system - advanced system settings -performance (settings) - advanced - virtual memory (change) and increase the size of it - try adding about 2000mb to avoid it in the future!

What do I set initial and maximum to?

Currently Max is 16mb, recomended is 4404mb and currently alocated is 3000mb

KeNotify is some utility on toshiba laptops to allow access to alternative F button uses like lock, sleep etc. Could likely disable it via run > msconfig > services/startup and look for KeNotify in the lists then disable.

Won't I need this to use my Fn buttons?

Personally I'd remove all of the extra stuff that's running. For some reason laptops tend to come with loads of programs installed that you almost never use.

Open the task manager and see what's running in the background, that way you can see what's hogging your RAM.

First thing I did when I got my laptop was get rid of as much of that stuff as I could. It comes up at random times, when I'm using chrome or something low on memory like that.

Edited by JT!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey, was just trying some broadcasting for gaming.

I have a problem with the sound. Set to Stereo Mix, have my headphones on and mic disabled.

I can hear the game sound on the stream but it seems to get in a loop with the sound and just gets worse and worse till it's just scrambled...

Any ideas how to setup so it's just the game sound recorded, and possibly I can enable my mic too and have everything running smoothly?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I thought i'd drop this in here aswell as the random questions thread...hopefully the PC geeks will help me out :)

Really basic question.... I think.

When using dreamweaver and HTML and CSS. I want to create a page exactly like this Here .....Just an image. How do I get it scaled to the correct size. And then get it to enlarge, just like this one?

I swear it should be really simple but I don't know how to do it (because i've learnt dreamweaver completely backwards). I'm guessing its just a width 50% scaled or something, but it's too simple, and i can't find the solution online. thanks guys :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought i'd drop this in here aswell as the random questions thread...hopefully the PC geeks will help me out :)

Really basic question.... I think.

When using dreamweaver and HTML and CSS. I want to create a page exactly like this Here .....Just an image. How do I get it scaled to the correct size. And then get it to enlarge, just like this one?

I swear it should be really simple but I don't know how to do it (because i've learnt dreamweaver completely backwards). I'm guessing its just a width 50% scaled or something, but it's too simple, and i can't find the solution online. thanks guys :)

That's not a webpage, that's just opening a picture in your browser... How your browser then opens and resizes the picture changes from browser to browser.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, another question....

Is it somehow possible to setup a proxy through to my home PC? Me being in Ireland and another connection in UK at my parents?

It's not a proxy you need, its a VPN.

You can use software such as LogMeIn pr PCAnywhere (google them).

Alternatively you could speak to your ISP about a static IP address (at an annual cost!) and simply setup a VPN Dial up...works very well in a server environment however you may have trouble with a home PC. Probably the third party software would be best.

Also it is important to remember you can only go as fast as your, and your parents internet speed - documents, music is fine....games or video I'd forget it :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I've got a problem with my Samsung NC130. Certain buttons on the keyboard show up different letters on the screen. When I type 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' I get 'thme qiuiucky brown fox jiumeps ovmer thme lazky dog'. I've restored the system to an earlier point, checked the regional settings, fiddled with connection on the motherboard, virus checked and booted it on Ubuntu (where it was the same). Don't think i've spilt anything on it or anything. Any ideas? Running XP SP3 / Ubuntu.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...