Posts by Catweazle

...can draw on a large base of people who like you don't study religious texts (even their own), instead taking the word of those leaders as being the will of god. In the Islamic world that's made worse by a large percentage of illiterate believers.

Oh, I think the predominately Christian areas of the world suffer more than their fair share of those as well, including my own country and the good ole "land of the free and the home of the brave". It's not simply a lack of literacy skills altogether which leaves people vulnerable to manipulation by those pushing agendas. Those people whose literacy skills don't extend too far down the path of developing skills at interpretation, research/verification and critical analysis are also very vulnerable

Hi neeraj. If you have a browse through the Forum menu you'll notice a Visual Basic section in the Software Development area of the Forum. Create a topic in there if you wish to get assistance with your problem :)

First thing to do is to visit the 'Viruses, Spyware and other Nasties' section of out forum and create a topic describing the problem you have and asking for assistance. You should also read the relevent 'Stickied' topics in that section for general information about how to avoid having intruders get a toehold on your PC.

Hiya Hubba, and welcome.

If you're referring to image sizes in sigs, then I'm not surprised that you can't find any info. If you check the 'Edit signature' option in your user control Panel, you'll notice that no tool is provided for inserting images in your signature. that's because we don't have sig pics here at DaniWeb :D

For inclusion in topic posts, commonsense needs to prevail. Be mindful of the problems faced by those reading the topic via dial-up connections, and also refrain from including pics which are 'wider' than an average browser window would allow to be displayed without a horizontal scroll bar being needed.

I am always an advocate of checking your sources, server_crash. In this instance, you don't need to check too far.

In Genesis I, God creates all the creatures of the Earth, and then creates Adam to hold dominion over them (Genesis 1:25 and Genesis 1:26) In Genesis II, however, God decides that Adam doesn't deserve to be lonely, so after he's created the fella, he proceeds to create all the animals, birds and fishies all over again, just to keep him company. (Genesis 2:18 and 2:19)

In the light of this discussion about Evolution and Creation, that's a rather large 'whoopsie', don't you think? I could go on and on, of course, but as I said the provision of such examples is a rather meaningless exercise, because the two works being compared and contrasted are not appropriate for such comparison.

You miss the point entirely. I never stated there that I was unable to provide examples from either of the works you mention, I stated that it was not necessary to meaningful discussion to do so.

The contention of my comment was that such comparisons and contrasts between the two works are irrelevent, because one is posited as a definitive statement, whilst the other is presented as a theory. The one asks for complete, total and exclusive acceptance, whilst the other provides a foundation upon which to build. Note there that I am referring to their relevences to the 'origins of species', which is all that Darwin addressed. Some of the conclusions drawn by Darwin have been since rejected, and alternative explanations or developments of explanations posited in their stead, by other researchers. That is a 'natural' progression from his work, in light of its very 'nature'.

Darwin never claimed to be 'God'! He never at any stage claimed to be omniscient.

The numerous and varied contradictions in the Bible have been the subject of extensive discussion, to the extent that providing links and/or examples is not really necessary for a comment about it to be meaningful. If you've not previously encountered them, a simple Google search for contradictions in the Bible will uncover a large amount of such discussion.

The contradictions contained within 'Origin of Species' are a somewhat different situation, however. Darwin never intended to present a definitive statement, there are gaps, holes and inconsistencies in the body of evidence he uses to draw conclusions from, and also in the lines of reasoning that he uses. But Darwin himself acknowledges those within the work. He's sought simply to demonstrate that species are not immutable, and posited a theory about the process by which such mutation occurs. He's not, within that work, presented his ideas as conclusively and irrefutably 'proven', and he has consistently qualified the conclusions he has drawn.

Seems to me to be rather irrelevent how fast Firefox is 'fixed' in relation to IE. In the course of my employment I have to regularly use a wide range of browsers. Simple fact is that IE, unless configured so high in its 'security settings' that it becomes almost non-usable, lets through a helluva lot of spyware etc., while alternatives like Firefox, Mozilla or Opera do not. When it comes to the amount of crap a person needs to contend with, I'm always going to choose the option which lets through the least.

When this topic was created, Firefox was the best available alternative in that regard, and that particular situation hasn't changed since!

http://www.psychforums.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=204

jnutty, please continue with your original topic as the place to pose your question. This thread is not an appropriate place to repost it. If no-one has replied for a while, it's acceptable to repost yourself, asking if anyone has further suggestions, just to 'bump' the topic back to top of page, but please don't continue to do that. Once is enough ;)

... You see what that says? Adequate security cannot be provided by applications... it must be accomplished at the OS level. What does this mean? Application security DOSE NOT MATTER!

Unless your application is PERFECT sooner or later it will be exploited, and all applications get exploited in the same way.

cheers

catch

Oh dear! Your argument seems to be Because no security application is perfect, it naturally follows that no such application is worthy of implementation and use! Seems a rather irrational argument to me!

No doubt you have achieved learning and/or qualifications, dude, but the simple factor of commonsense seems to be somewhat lacking in there. Effectively, you've told people that, because Security software for use on a Windows machine isn't perfect, they shouldn't bother using any of it.

Now I'm not sure if that was your intention, but it most certainly is the effect of your comments to date. And it's downright silly. While you're busy waiting for Utopia to come along, we'll just keep right on advising people to use the protections which ARE available to them, thanks!

Nicely put, bjdea1, but don't forget that a similar argument can be presented by those people who do not accept that Christ was, or is, the 'son of God'.

Forum discussions such as this one are all too easily waylaid by people who consider that any such discussion necessitates that they should 'stick up' for their particular Faith. When that happens, all too often comments become simply expressions of intolerance towards the views of others who have different beliefs. Such is not necessary, as a discussion like this should really only be scholarly or thoughful and considered discourse. There is no need for anyone to 'justify' their particular Faith in a forum discussion such as this, and it is unacceptable for people to expect that others need do that. DaniWeb is a global community, and the membership contains people from varied places and of varied Faiths. Here is not a suitable place to criticise or condemn others on the basis of their Faith.

Anyone who makes a statement to the effect of "I believe...." is perfectly justified in doing so. But by virtue of the fact that they have made such statement they should expect and accept that other people are going to disagree with their beliefs. But Faith is a personal thing, and if people here allow their comments to become, either explicitly or implicitly, "You should believe....." then they've stepped over the 'line'.

It frustrates me when I see people step over that 'line', because …

heh heh......

The information itself wasn't disputed. Anandtech is certainly one of the many good tech sites on the internet which can be used to inform your decision making about which components to use.

It's simply the order of the decision making processes which were the subject of my comments. Far too many people focus on the processor to the detriment of other components in the system. Far too many people consider 'fast' RAM as their second consideration. But both those things have far less impact on a system's capability for specific tasks than other components in the system, such as hard drives and display cards for example.

Let's face it, you can use the 'fastest and best' processor available, but if you don't also include the other components which make a computer suitable for the task you wish to perform, then the computer itself is still going to be a 'dud' for the purposes for which it is intended!

If you are asking if people on this forum are interested in such discussion I'd have to suggest that the answer is no. Previous mentions of the activity have attracted no interest whatsoever here.

I don't give a crap about other religions other than my own. Especially the muslim religion. What kind of religion teachers their followers to drive airplanes into buildings and kill thousands? Ohh wait, it was because they were promised something by their God, right? ppffffff what a bunch of crap. The only thing they got was to burn in hell.

None do. The bunch of crap was the contention that Islam teaches people to do that. I'd suggest you actually take the time to read Islamic texts before making stupid, unsubstantiable claims like that.

You got all that stuff wrong way round mate.

First thing is to work out what use the PC is intended for.

Second thing is to work out what components it needs to have to meet those uses. (The power supply unit needs to be adequate to power ALL devices in the PC, not just the processor)

Whether you choose an Intel or AMD processor (and motherboard socket type) is about the least important of all decisions to make.

well... switch to a secure windows and deny access to the hosts file... come on people... there are always ways to do things... there are always ways to undo things also... but set it up correctly and it is not likely that the child is going to be able to undo it.

We try, believe me we try. I suggest you read this topic again with a more open mind. what we are trying to show is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a machine to perform this task (blocking children from internet porn) for you. The problem is not one which is related to computing methods. It's one which is related to parenting methods and the effectiveness of communication between parents and their children.

You cannot get a computer to do the parenting for you!

Sorry to intrude on the wonderful discussion in a jocular manner, but I just came across this rather nice comic look at efforts to deny 'science' in the name of 'religion'.

[img]http://images.ucomics.com/comics/td/2005/td050514.gif[/img]

I'm not suggesting that any 'creationists' here have gone to the extent depicted in that, of course :D

You got that all askew, I'm afraid. The original theories of Evolution as posited by Darwin and his contemporaries sought only to explain the origin of Species, not necessarily the origins of life itself. Theories which posit that life itself is the result of an electro-chemical reaction came much later, and are by no means universally accepted.

The 'fullness' that you speak of is a fantasy and a fallacy, and the process of 'scaling back' the theory to less stringently oppose the idea of 'God's Creation' exists only in your own head, I'm afraid.

Initially, Darwin's theory posited that evolution occurs purely by a process of 'natural selection'. Later study and understanding has also introduced the concept of 'mutation' into our understanding of the overall process. Evolution theory does not, and has never, suggested that evolution is an explanation for the initial origin of life.

It's your right to reject the theory, of course, but please don't 'explain' your rejection by using fallacious argument.

Click on 'TechTalk in the menu at left. There is not only a hardware section, but within it there is also a section specifically for various add-in cards.

While I don't have as much a problem with evolution in general as many religious folks, I don't believe it explains the origin of life on earth, nor can it.

errmmm....

Evolution doesn't purport to explain that. It is explain of the changes which ensued AFTER the origin of life on Earth. Evolution is a process of CHANGE, not an explanation of CREATION.

The people who taught you science placed far too much credibility upon its findings, and considered them to be incontestible truths. They are not. Nor are our religious beliefs. At some stage or other all our beliefs, whatever form they take, come down to a matter of trust and faith.

We can verify and support to the point where we accept and believe, but we cannot ever KNOW in the full sense of the word.

I sure hope you never rejected an understanding of evolution purely because it doesn't explain creation of life on Earth. That'd be rather silly. :D

Good comments in this topic already. Removing his privileges to use the PC is the obvious answer.

But be sure that he's actually viewing porn. Just because there are porn links in internet history doesn't guarantee that porn sites have been visited and viewed. Those links in history can also come from advertising. Hell, I've picked them up browsing for CD cover art and such, and ended up in heated debate with my wife over it until I showed her just how innocently the links can get there!

How big is the boot partition? It's a good thing to give Windows elbow room. 10 Gb or so is advised, and I personally am happy to leave it with 20Gb.

I keep Windows and core Microsoft products on the system partition. All data storage and other program storage is kept elsewhere.

I'm a firm believer in adding more drive storage rather than squeezing things into a cramped space :D

Why thank you! I was pondering whether or not to answer the queries about those comments, but decided that they really contain enough explanation 'as is'.

For the record, I do not personally hold belief in 'Almighty God', as I personally reject all organised religions as any form of absolute truth. I'm happy to live this life without knowing or pondering what lies around, above or beyond it in any spiritual sense. I believe absolutely that Good and Evil exist, and am happy to learn from all the major works of religion and philosophy in order to help me follow the path of 'good'. I believe that only I can make the choices which will keep me on that path.

Should the concept of 'immortal soul' eventually prove to be a truism, I hold no fear that it will be under threat due to the fact that I have not adhered to some prescribed ritual during the course of my life.

And I am firmly convinced that evolution is one of the wonders of creation, just as I am firmly convinced that creation itself lies outside the realm of our ability to comprehend.

Changing the default install directory and then uninstall/reinstalling programs to move them can have a number of benefits. Firstly it helps to keep your Windows partition clean and uncluttered. Secondly it makes the task of creating drive images an simplr one. Your image sets will be smaller and more organised. If you have programs and data files on separate drives or partitions, and your Windows installation gets corrupted and unusable, you need only restore the image of the system partition. Quick, easy, and fully functional again!

Whether or not it's worth the effort is up to you. It depends on the way you use your system.

A religious group which seeks to not have things like evolution as allowable content in education is an extremist group. Fine if the members of such groups wan to have such content removed from the educational process for their own children. Do that if you want. But expect to have to maintain your own private school system for your children. Don't expect to have your extremist views foisted upon the mainstream education system because, after all, they ARE extremist views. Current opinion amongst the vast majority of Theological and Scientific circles holds that Evolution and Creation do not necessarily contradict each other.

No good holding strictly to the depiction of the process of creation as depicted in the Bible i'm afraid. In fact the Word as expressed in the Bible cannot really be taken as a literal exposition of 'God's Word' at all. Taken in its entirety, the Bible is so contradictory as to be effectively meaningless in terms of human comprehension.

Let's just take Creation as the Act, and Evolution as our best effort to explain the process shall we? That's the best combination of explanation available to us if we're to hold belief in an 'Almighty God'.

That's one extreme, belama. But more realistically in terms of high performance cards and SLI/Crossfire configuration is that the extra performance on;y impacts on the extent to which you can have graphics options turned up high. Currently, ATi gives better performance than NVidia in Anisotropic Filtering. That's its 'strength'. On very recent games, that means you can have more 'realism' in the textures displayed onscreen. When it comes down to competitive gameplay, who on Earth is going to care that the surface details of close up objects looks more realistic than it does on your opponents machine, or that the metal grate you're running accross is more believable? Those things are only of importance to the person who is taking their time travelling through the game world, and marvelling at the scenery!

Sounds likely I'd agree, benlobata, but I wouldn't go so far as to make definitive statements such as 'can't' or 'never'. Matter of fact, I think it highly likely that private distribution of materials will someday soon come under intense pressure, and that such pressure is not really very hard to apply. I think it extremely important to have legitimate distribution sources for software tools, because private distribution newtworks are currently exploiting a 'hole' that isn't really that hard to plug.

Have you ever signed up to a new ISP and noticed that there are different 'levels' of service available. Ever wondered why 'business' packages seem to be more expensive than household ones, even though they seem to offer similar features? The main reason for that is that household services are tailored for activity which is primarily downloading. Uploading is not expected to be any major extent of data transfer activity. Business services, on the other hand, are tailored to handle heavy traffic in both directions.

Currently, ISPs don't generally stringently monitor heavy upload traffic from household or private connections. But it is not difficult for them to do so, and it is not difficult for them to impose upload limits on services.

....its only a slight increse in performance, but for some real gamer itll make a diffrence and give you that edge.

That's the thing about SLI or Crossfire that I disagree with the most! For the 'real gamer' it makes no difference whatsoever, because the performance difference is beyond that point where it makes any difference at all to frame rates and respinsiveness in actual gameplay. Instead, it's at the point where the only detectable difference lies in benchmark tests of the hardware.

I once saw a games journalist describe the concept of the ungamer - the person who maintains a high performance games system, but for whom the hardware itself is the passion in his or her activity, rather than the games. It is the ungamer for whom small differences in SLI or Crossfire performance is meaningful.

The 'real gamer', as implied in your comment, can maximise games performance with a single, high-end display card. The person playing at a competitive level where small differences in hardware performance will give an 'edge' in currently available games is not going to be worried about a difference which is not going to have an impact until the hardware becomes outdated.

Don't agree with the 'greedy' tag, I'm afraid. Might be true for some 'cheap and nasty' programs but it's not true for any reputable software I've come across.

Internet Explorer has a lot of file types associated with it becuase it is integrated with the Windows shell. It's part of the OS and has a right to have file associations. Anybody is free to use alternative software and have that take over associations.

The vast majority of programs 'hijack' associations only when you used the 'dumbed down' automatic default install. choosing the 'Advanced' install option, as I mentioned above, gives you the opportunity to customise the installation.

I'm sorry, but if people choose to use the 'Install for Dummies' then it's a bit rich to complain afterwards!

The nations you list might proclaim themselves to be communist but they are in reality socialist nations. Marx, for all his failings, taught of stages in the progression to communism, and he got that bit right ;) It's just communism itself that can't be achieved.

But this is all straying from the topic, you're getting all heated and upset, and I'm not interested in 'proving a point'.

And the relevence of the 'crappy little poem' lies in the insight and understanding contained in its words :D

I've read and studied, 'Communist manifesto' and all three volumes of 'Das Kapital'. Matter of fact I have a sub-major in Political history and many years of taking a great interest in the world around me.

I've also read and thoroughly studied over the years all the great works of the World's major religions. I don't like spouting opinion on such matters unless I've read and understood what I'm talking about.

And the 'crappy little poem' is one of the greatest songs of the greatest of all American folk singers! Woody Guthrie was a true minstrel in every sense of the word, and one of the 'fathers' of contemporary music!

Care to list those 'advantages' and the extent, in benchmark terms, to which Crossfire is 'kicking SLI's ass'. Or are you simply spouting nonsense you've heard but not understood?

There are several 'modes' for Crossfire. One of those 'modes' allows older games to be used as SLI enabled rather than single card. Whoopty doo! Those games don't need dual cards to run at full detail anyway, and that mode doesn't give double performance - only about a 15% increase!

Crossfire is more flexible than NVidia SLI but only slightly. The two cards used don't need to be identical, but they need to be damned close!

At its fastest mode of operation Crossfire outperforms NVidia SLI, but only by a narrow margin in realistic terms. The truth is, either configuration gives enough performance to cater to game needs for the foreseeable future. Hell mate, if I just knocked the Terminator out with a single clenched fist punch, do you reckon you'd 'kick my ass' by doing the same with a knuckleduster on? The bastard's still flat on his back, isn't he?

And, just for the record, your comment " itll be faster then any single PCI-e card youll ever find." is just plain silly. In a short while the NVidia 7xxx series cards and the ATi R520 cards will be out, and either of those cards will match or outperform two current cards in dual configuration!

Dude, much of that is wrong on so many levels that it boggles the mind!

Your inital comment is a thinly disguised expression of intolerance to any religion other than your own.

Your comments about Communism portray a lack of understanding about what Communism is.

Your final comment portrays a lack of understanding of the nature of science and its relationship and confinement to the physical universe.

But let me just debunk that nonsense about Communism and Marx.

There is no such thing as a communist nation and there never has been. Communism exists only in theory, and the principles upon which it is based pretty much 'mirror' the teachings and philosophy of Christ. The nations referred to as 'communist' are really Socialist nations.

Communism doesn't teach that religion should be cast aside. Onlt politicians who have called themselves Communists have taught that, in much the same way as politicians who call themselves 'Christians' teach hatred, intolerance and greed. Karl Marx never said the religion was 'the root of evil', he described religion as 'the opiate of the masses'. He was condemning the way religion is used as an excuse to keep people ignorant of their condition in this world! Communism and faith can go hand in hand - they are not mutually exclusive.

Science and religion can go hand in hand also, becuase they too are not mutually exclusive.

JESUS CHRIST
(Woody Guthrie)

Jesus Christ was a man who …

belama, the information ATi has provided there is 'PR-speak'. It's technically correct but effectively incorrect.

The faster card will certainly operate at its native speed. But it won't continually operate. It will spend a fair amount of time 'waiting' for the slower card, so effectively it will be limited to the slower speed.

Let's not get into a debate about P2P please. That is NOT the topic raised. I limited it to people's right to make legitimate backup copies.

There are a number of tools which 'strip' the regional coding and copy protection from DVDs to enable them to be copied. If the pressure is stepped up they could potentially all be removed from legitimate distribution. None of them is provided by a major software publisher which has the resources to combat that level of legal pressure.

You didn't understand what I said. The instructions I gave above will move the entire 'My documents folder to another place of your choice, and also ask you if you want to transfer all the files and folders inside it. You don't need to worry yourself abut the Documents and Settings folder and moving parts of it manually. There is user information in Documents and settings that shouldn't really be moved. They take up bugger all room, and your data files are the important bit to shift!

You can't 'move' the programs you already have installed. You can only change the default install directory with the following registry tweak using Regedit:

1. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
2. Find ProgramFilesDir whose default should be C:\Program Files
3. Change this to whatever directory you wish. I changed it to D:\Program Files for example.

Remember you have to reboot for your changes to show.

If you wish to move programs you already have installed, you will need to uninstall then reinstall them.

Neither of these changes will make Windows slower unless the drive you change them to is an old, slow drive.

Concerned about this one:

A person is free to accept any scientific theory about human origins provided it is acknowledged that, at some stage, God infused an immortal soul into the human body.

I'm agnostic. I do not believe that 'life' can be adequately explained by physical science, or that such explanation is ever conceivably within the boundaries of human comprehension. Yet the use of the terms 'God' and 'immortal soul' presupposes an explanation one way or another. The question seems value-laden, and intended to push me toward making a 'science v religion' decision which I'm not prepared to make.

Which Windows version. You can move My Documents to another drive or partition. You can also move the default programs installation location to another drive or partition.

Right-click My Documents and choose 'Properties'. The button is there to enable you to move it.

Do it for any user you like. Create a folder for each user account on the target drive beforehand if you wish to.

No, as I understand it the master card will be X850XT, not X850XT PE. Thus, Crossfire configuration will be limited to X850XT performance level in the dual configuration, even if the 'Slave' card is X850XT PE.

Small difference when you are doubling that performance I guess, but a pertinent point nevertheless. It's no good expecting something to happen when it isn't gonna :)

Whilst I do not support piracy, I really believe that people should have the right to make working copies of the fragile CD and DVD discs they spend hard-earned money on. but it seems that our ability to do so is seriously under threat.

The oldest of the DVD copying tools, DVD Decrypter, has now been taken down from the internet. The product's website has been handed over to the )unnamed) company who won the legal battle with threats, and mirror sites are being contacted and instructed to remove it also.

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/11914

What's next? Other similar tools have also been withdrawn recently, and it's going to take a company with pretty persuasive and expensive legal backup to stop the onslaught.

errmmm.....

AMD64 outperforms P4EE in most tasks, and Athlon FX outeperforms it it most of the remainder of tasks.

AMD64X2 processors have now gone retail, and outperform the dual core Pentium processors by a considerable margin. There is currently no market niche for which Intel has a better performing processor available than AMD.

What does not worry me:

- Global warming (they don't even have any hard proof yet)

Try living in Australia, mate! Way things are going here the whole fvcken country seems likely to turn into another Gobi desert!

Let's keep this discussion relevent to SLI and Crossfire, shall we?

For later use in a crossfire configuration, someone purchasing an X800 series card right now can save a few dollars by purchasing an X800XL card rather than an X800 Pro or an X800XT. Sure, the XL isn't as fast or as capable as the higher performance alternatives, but when the time comes to add the second card for Crossfire configuration consider this:

* Crossfire requires one card to be a special 'Master' card.
* The dual card performance of Crossfire is limited to the speed and capabilities of the weakest card in the pairing
* The X800 'Master' cards are going to be XL speed, because only XL cards are still being produced in the X800 line.

Add that all together and you get a situation in which, if Crossfire dual card is the eventual goal, it's more economic to put up with slightly lowr performance initially for X800 cards. The X850 cards don't have that limitation, I believe, and the X850 'Master' card is going to be more capable.

An X300 card is TOTALLY unsuitable for gaming. Games performance is heavily reliant on the power of the display card, and much less reliant on the power of the processor. In addition, if you want to use Crossfire you will need to choose an X800 series card or an X850 series card. No other ATI cards will be suitable for use in Crossfire configuration until the R520 based next generation cards are released, according to currently available information.

If you plan on a system for games, and your budget won't stretch to a better card than an X300, then choose less processor and more video card ;)

The configuration you've suggested there sucks!

gerbil, the jumper shorting method does NOT require removing the battery ;)

It does, however, necessitate having the correct instructions available in the motherboard manual, and these are seldom supplied with 'brand name' PCs.

I hope that works for you. You may need other drivers as well. There is no motherboard chipset driver listed for download there, and that one may need to be installed before the graphics driver will work.

there may just be necessary device drivers which are only on the recovery CD or in the recovery partition.

If you've lost the recoveryCD or removed the recovery partition, HP has instructions for obtaining new CDs listed on that download site.

Which is why I asked earlier why you were using a Windows CD rather than the recovery CD which should have been supplied with the system, or following the recovery procedures mentioned in the product documentation to reinstall from a drive partition if that is relevent for your particular HP Pavilion.

There is a graphics driver available for download from
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?dlc=en&tool=softwareCategory&lc=en&product=83455&cc=us&os=228

but there doesn't seem to be a full device driver set there.

You will certainly need to find the recovery CD/procedures if you want to restore your PC to full factory-state functionality, with bundled software etc included!

A 9200SE is a REALLY crappy video card. Far Cry might play but you'd definitely need to reduce graphics options, and even then it'd likely be 'choppy'.

You don't 'need' SLI, you simply need a better display card!

First thing to try after you replace the CMOS battery is simply to pop the Windows XP CD in the drive and see if the computer will now boot from it.

By the way, why are you using a Windows XP CD rather than the recovery CDs which should have come with the HP Pavilion?