Posts by SantaPotato

I bought my PC from Acer. It had Vista pre-installed. It came with no CD or anything else. I ended up uninstalling most of the Acer bloatware anyway.

But now I want to reformat my HD and install Vista afresh. What do I do?

(PS- I heard Vista users get a free Windows 7 upgrade. Do I need a CD for that?)

Thanks for reading. :)

Shot in the dark, but does it get set on mute whenever you press a key or button?

Maybe a button is set as a mute shortcut, and whenever you press it, it inadvertently mutes

Hi there. I want to get a personal website going.

I made a google apps account, bought a website name off of enom.com, and got a hosting account at x10hosting.com

But I realised I am totally clueless about DNS settings, host settings, A (Address), CNAME, etc. Everytime I visit my website, I end up at the google apps main page when I want it to end up at my own page.

How do I figure the basics out? Here's what I know so far:

[Host] : : [PUBLIC]

It's certainly on my to-do list if I decide to stick with Vista. Thanks for your help.

I haven't used Vista yet, but I'm sure some of the basic OS tweaks for 2000 and XP might still give your system a little speed.

Here are some pages that deal with performance issues. Just remember that all tweaks carry some risks, so it's good to know what your doing before you do anything.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/northrup_restoreperf.mspx

http://www.tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx

Thanks for the response.

It looks like I'll need to spend either way. On more ram if I want Vista, or on an older OS.

From what I've read, Vista is a disappointment, especially for people who want just the bare minimum out of their OS.

From what I know, XP SP2 and Windows 2000 SP4 are very stable operating systems, with the buggy phases long gone. Most software still supports 2000 and XP too.

But if I were to stick with Vista, would it be possible to disable all of the extra functionality in order to tone it down enough to work as fast as XP?

Hello there, knowledgeable computerfolk from the land of the internet.

I am buying a computer in the next few days. It has Windows Vista pre-installed on it. I'd rather have Windows 2000 on it.

I don't like all the fancy-schmancy special effects and bonus features. Win2k, or even XP with minimal visual effects/fireworks/bells and whistles is good for me.

Is there a way I can get rid of Vista and install Windows 2000? Word around the block is that she's a resource-digger.

Or better yet, can I tone down Vista enough to drastically reduce its resource usage?

Thanks in advance for the replies.

I put this off for a while. I'll look into it once more at a later date with your instructions in mind. Thanks for the advice.

You know, your right. I have no idea why they're called "curse" words.

Hi there. I have a ripped(correct term?) CD on my hard drive. I wanted to burn it to save space on my computer. But when I tried to burn it, Nero gave me an error saying:

"Block size does not correspond to image length"

It gave me two options:

A) Correct the problem

B) Ignore the problem

What went wrong? How can I fix it?

No, its not what you think. :cheesy:

It's my first time assembling a computer. I'm about to get some money to go parts-shopping soon in an effort to build my first desktop.

What's the most cost efficient/well performing setup I can get?

Should I go with these guys and get something like this?
http://www.pcstats.com/ShoppingList.cfm

Anyone have any tips, suggestions or ideas, feel free. :)

Hello folks.

I dont frequent this forum a whole lot, but whenever I have anything computer-related to deal with, this is the first place I visit.

I appreciate the clean, neat look of the forum, and I'd like to suggest making navigation easier by adding a collapse function to the various forum sections on the [very long] forum index.

Hey folks,

Im on a Dell 600m laptop with 2 usb slots in the back. The upper slot's plastic bit broke. Its a little black chip that just snapped one day and came off.

Is there a way I can fix it or should I try and replace it?

Thanks. But regarding the heating- is that a problem? I'd like to know if there is any way I can at least prevent my laptop from heating up too much. Is heating a problem?

Recently I've become concerned about the heating issues my laptop has been having so I did some research.

Turns out Im using a disproportionately large amount of memory even when Im running nothing (Firefox with 2 tabs open and Google Desktop). It says 70% memory usage. If I turn everything off it goes down to 60%.

I've turned off firewall, antivirus software, minimized graphic usage and disabled system sounds on xp, but it still heats up very fast.

I've also updated and ran antivirus, antispyware, trojan detector, defrag and all the standard scans.

How do I prolong the health of my hardware and ensure that my hardware is working well?

Im running a Dell 600m. 512mb ram. 1.6Ghz Pentium M processor with 60gb HD.

Is this a program you or someone you know creted?? do you have the sourcec code??

Software that take a lot of memory or processing time is due to the activity involved in the operations of the program. The Memory is taken up by the application taking as much available RAM to save variables, arrays of data, and other critical items in your application. The processing is simple, it's processing a lot... This could damage your computer, this is how viruses work. They bog down memory and processing, but if you think it IS odd, then definatly you might have something in your system that is doing this, but if you know it's the program you are running, you might try distributed processing... tell me more.

The program: Tribes Vengeance Multiplayer Demo.

The system processor requirements read: 1.0 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD® Athlon™ processor or equivalent; 256 MB RAM

This never used to happen before. Its a recent occurence and only happens with this program. I tend to think its the program's fault, but Im concerned about the hardware- will this deal any damage?

Cheers

Josh

I use a program that can be considered CPU intensive. My laptop tends to heat up quite a bit after a while, but cools down later. [a] I'd like to know if excessive heat is a problem or not.

Another thing that happens is that the program's memory usage doesnt remain constant. Task Manager shows it slowly and gradually rising. Sporadically things start to bog down. Thats when task manager shows CPU usage at 100%.

This remains for a couple minutes and then suddenly plummets down to around 60% and all is fine. This cycle repeats itself for the duration that the program is running on my computer. What does this mean, and how do I fix it?

Im running a Dell 600m 1.6ghz Pentium M with 512mb Ram with Windows SP2.

I tried defragmenting, full avg scan, hijackthis, ewido-scan, full adaware scan and no ebola.

I also have a saved screenshot I'd like to upload but it wont let me. It isnt p-rn, really. ;)

Hi. My name is Josh and I'll be your troubled computer user for the week.