Posts by willcomp

i have the DOS version

i think theres a win95 version, might ebay that

fallout was the father of all RPGs and has a cult following

Have you tried Windows 95 Compatibility Mode?

What's Fallout? I'm not a gamer :)

Does program directly access hardware? If so, Vista will think it's naughty and won't let it play.

Most 16bit programs, including DOS apps, will run in Vista by using Compatibility Mode. I installed some DOS applications during beta testing and all of them worked although a bit of tweaking was required for a couple. Also successfully installed several older 16 bit Windows apps such as early versions (Win 3.X) of Excel and Word.

Describe the "lots of beeping" for us as best you can. For example continuous beeps, one long 2 short beeps repeating.

Your Asus board has solid state capacitors which are less likely to fail.

Have you contacted Asus about warranty replacement? Asus boards have a 3 year warranty.

The symptoms you have are unusual for a weak motherboard cap. Strange things can and do occur though.

Thanks, WillComp! Office 2000 compatibility is great news! I use it a lot. Do you know about Adobe Photoshop 6.0 ?

Photoshop Elements 6.0 (which is current version) is compatible, but I don't know about Photoshop 6.0.

No personal experience.

Vista is pretty, more secure, and I like the file manager (many don't).

I haven't installed SP1 yet, so can't tell you for sure. PC Mag had a good article on SP1.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2192557,00.asp

Office 2000 does run on Vista. I installed it during beta testing prior to installing Office 2007 beta and had no problems.

You're welcome. When purchasing memory, stick with Crucial, Corsair, and Kingston - you'll be glad you did. All 3 are very reliable.

Hard Drives and optical drives. I have been reading in a lot of reviews on newegg for various boards that these boards will not boot from an SATA drive. I would have thought you'd be able to boot from any drive connected to the MB.

News to me. Realize that many posters on Newegg are relative novices and may not understand BIOS settings or F6 drivers.

Yes, you should be able to boot from any SATA drives (HDD or optical). There were problems with some early SATA optical drives, but those have been resolved as best I know. I haven't had any problems booting from SATA drives other than the pain of installing F6 drivers for HDD support.

Questions, questions, questions :)

Memory will usually "downshift" to work with lower bus speeds.

I'd buy a dual channel set to save on shipping costs if purchased at Newegg. Dual channel memory is not necessary, but not a bad move either.

Here's my recommendation:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145440

The board must support at least 4 SATA 3GB/s devices, and must be able to boot from an SATA device. (I'm surprised how many don't)

What do you mean by that comment (boot from SATA)? What SATA devices are you referring to?

Here's what Newegg has in SLI boards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010200022+1070921489+1073607588+1075707618+107191935&Configurator=&Subcategory=22&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

Check specs for SATA ports and memory sockets.

You assume correctly.

Higher speed RAM can usually be tweaked to run with more aggressive timings when installed on a PC with lower bus speeds. There's a better chance that 2.5 CL memory will actually run at that setting.

As I said earlier, there won't be any tweaking on a Pavilion. The best you can hope for is that SPD on memory is accurate and BIOS will use SPD information.

So am I and support (meaning security updates and extended support) ends in 2014. I am also a MS Partner and Tech Net subscriber.

For your reading pleasure. Apparently your MS source was mistaken.
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/?sort=PN&alpha=Windows+XP&Filter=FilterNO

Use SIW to identify NIC chip manufacturer and model. Post back with info if you need help finding the driver.

http://www.gtopala.com/

The Vista boot loader will install on the XP partition (current boot partition) and will replace boot.ini as boot loader. It will remain after Vista is removed.

I highly recommend installing VistaBootPro in XP to easily edit Vista boot options. It runs in either XP or Vista.

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

XP support will expire no earlier than April 2014. I believe that still gives everyone plenty of time.

Vista SP1 has been released to manufacturing meaning that large OEMs (e.g. Dell, HP, Gateway) should be installing it now.

XP is still available from Newegg and other on-line merchants.

Use manufacturer's diagnostics to test drive.

All of the major hard disk manufacturers diagnostics are on the UBCD. It is a handy tool to have. Or you can download from the manufacturer's web site.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html

If HDD tests OK, post back and we'll try some XP repairs using Recovery Console (XP CD required).

You may not want my recommendation, but here it is :)

For AMD CPUs, I primarily use Gigabyte motherboards. For Intel CPUs, either Intel or Gigabyte.

Do you need a SLI board? What is your CPU, RAM, video card, etc. that you wish to keep. I surmise the CPU is Socket AM2 based on the existing mobo.

I'd recommend buying 2 inexpensive 512MB DDR400 modules. DDR400 gives you some overhead. On an HP PC, you will not be able to tweak memory timing which is usually required to actually get lower latencies.

Odds are that you won't notice any difference between CL2 and CL3 memory in your PC.

I use A-Data and PQI for inexpensive RAM and have had good results with both. When reliability is critical, I use either Crucial or Corsair.

Newegg is the site of choice for most. Tiger Direct has some good buys, but most involve mail in rebates.

http://www.newegg.com/
http://www.tigerdirect.com/

That's a bummer. Given symptoms, I really thought it was more likely the power supply.

Only way for him to disable auto reboot is using F8 startup options and then only if SP2 is installed.

What does that have to do with one vs two modules in single channel?

I didn't start repairing PCs last week either. May just have more experience than you.

In single channel mode, one larger stick will provide slightly better performance than two smaller sticks because the memory controller only has to address one slot. The difference is extremely small, but real.

I'd suggest someone study up on memory controllers.

Think what you will whether it's true or not.

Shouldn't have any problems with Intel chipset and ICH7 southbridge.

You're welcome. Incidentally, #9 Software is a legitimate merchant -- no pirated or bootleg copies.

SATA 300 is what's generally called SATA II or 3.0G although it really doesn't matter. No current SATA drives exceed the original SATA transfer rate of 150MB/sec. WD Raptors are SATA I drives and they are the fastest SATA drives available.

What is the chipset on your motherboard?

I thought about Win2K Pro but I would have to order a disk off eBay as I have only ME and XP., and you can't find it in stores anymore.

http://www.9software.com/product_p/win2kprosp4nfr.htm

Shouldn't if SPD is accurate unless you need to increase memory voltage. Odds are that it will run at 800MHz without problems.

Why didn't you let system vendor install memory? They would have used compatible memory.

If you bought 1066MHz RAM, then higher voltage will be required to drive the RAM. The JDEC spec stops at 800MHz, so anything above that is outside "normal" memory.

You shouldn't lose any memory capacity but speed may take some tweaking.

Since that's a high end board, try using SPD and see what happens, then start tweaking. Check memory manufacturer's web site for recommended settings.

If OS is 32 bit and 4GB RAM is installed, somewhere between 2.75GB and 3.5GB will be available due to reserved addresses. Without SLI, you'll probably see about 3.25GB available with a highly configured system. With SLI -- less than 3GB.

The only thing you need to do is install the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack. It's needed for new formats used in Office 2007.

There is no earthly reason for a home user to upgrade to Office 2007 and don't worry about it being out of date any time soon. It will be quite a while before most businesses change to 2007. It's too radical a change.

I'm trying to resolve a problem with Outlook 2007 now. It quit displaying graphics. Link is there and graphics can be copied to clipboard. No solutions on web, but several others with same problem. I have one PC that dual boots Vista/XP so I can learn Vista and Office 2007.

Mind telling us what motherboard you have. It just might be important :)

Error is related to ESCD (Extended System Configuration Data). BIOS provides a Plug and Play OS with configuration data.

First try clearing CMOS and disconnecting any unnecessary devices. ESCD info is stored in the CMOS.

If no luck there, I recommend flashing BIOS. Most likely there's a problem recognizing devices or the BIOS is corrupt.

Have you tried another power supply? Very well could the cause.

Are you getting any kind of display? What about staus lights?

How did Geek Squad test memory and HDD? Removed from notebook or with a boot disk?

Incidentally, C++ is a widely used programming language. So you do have software written in C++.

That's for DL disks. Here's spec sheet for drive:
http://support.necam.com/Optical/nd3500a/ND3500A_Datasheet.pdf

Supported media:
http://support.necam.com/optical/nd3500a/ND3500a_MediaList.pdf

Firmware:
http://support.necam.com/Optical/downloads/FlashFirmware/

Burning software (Nero or Roxio) will provide current firmware revision under drive properties.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814145067

I've had good luck with FX5200 cards. This one is fanless -- a plus for me. It's not strictly low profile, just has low profile bracket included.

Problem appears to occur when card changes into higher resolution modes and that could be either driver or faulty card.

The only generic XP driver is the one used for Safe Mode/VGA Only Mode.

Did you remove all previous ATI software before installing older drivers?

If nothing else works, purchase an inexpensive nVidia video card. Recommend nVidia to completely eliminate ATI drivers as cause.

Yes, go back one or two versions. If you still experience problems, try another video card.

Also try video card manufacturer's web site and see if they have drivers for your card. The original drivers (ones that came with card) are often more stable. Only need to update drivers is to support newer games/software or correct problems.

caperjack's correct -- no CPU drivers are needed. Newer CPUs have drivers for advanced features such as Cool 'n Quiet for Athlon 64 CPUs, but they are not essential for operation.

Windows 2000 Pro would be a better choice than Me for older hardware. W2K runs well on a PII or later CPU with 128MB or more RAM.

What happens if you unplug PC for a few minutes, plug it back in, and then boot?

Seems like a driver issue. What was the last driver you installed before XP went belly up?

Video driver is the prime suspect. Could also be that video card is faulty and works in VGA mode but not at higher resolutions. Try booting into VGA only mode.

Well, I erred -- first time in years :)

I have 2 ND3550 drives rather than ND3500 drives. However, I used and installed NEC DVD burners beginning with the ND2200 series (8X). Have never had any problems with burning any type of media (including +R and -R). I'm still using an ND2500 drive and have had no issues with it either.

Was firmware version or update ever mentioned?

Side comment: The NEC/Sony Optiarc burners now available are OK but are not as quiet and reliable as the NEC drives were.

That drive (NEC 3500) should burn anything you throw at it and it's not picky about brands (I have 2 of them). Still could be a bad batch of DVDs.

An XP PC with 512MB should not be slow unless you are referring to gaming performance. For normal use, something is slowing down your PC -- quite possibly malware (adware/spyware) or McAfee security itself.

Run msconfig and disable all startup items and non MS services. See if that improves performance. If so, re-enable startup items/services until you find the problem.

Install, update and run SuperAntiSpyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/

Socket 479 was used for Pentium M (mobile) CPUs. So 479 pins is correct.

CPU is a 1.86GHz Pentium M 750 CPU. They are out of production, so eBay will be your best bet. Search for Pentium M 750 or Centrino 750 (same CPU).

You will need to know what CPUs your notebook supports unless you select an exact match.

the reason the BSOD isnt readable is because automatic restart is enabled

Yes, I know and I also told him how to disable it in my first response.

If your motherboard supports dual channel memory, then 2 x 512 would be faster. They must be a matched pair for dual channel.

If your motherboard does not support dual channel memory, a single 1GB module would be slightly faster.

Memory speed is limited by FSB speed. Faster memory won't matter unless supported by FSB speed. It'll work, just at slower speed.