Search results

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    Upgrade needed for Fallout4?

    I haven't been keeping up for a while on my computer upgrades and am wondering whether I need to upgrade my PC to play Fallout 4 on moderate settings. My current specs are: CPU: AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core 2.5 GHz Socket AM2+ Motherboard: MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD RAM: 8GB...
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    Laptop stalls out

    Having some issues with a laptop stalling out intermitently. Most frequently when playing games but also other apps, watching youtube movies, etc. Video will freeze for 5-20 seconds and then often will freeze again after recovering for a split second...then when it recovers again it will go for...
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    Too old to run skyrim?

    It's been several years since I upgraded my PC and I'm wondering whether my ps3 would have noticably better graphics than my PC for this game. Modding, of course, is a separate consideration but I'm trying to understand what I would or wouldn't be sacrificing simply from a framerate/graphics...
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    Anyone know of a DVD player that supports .AVI?

    Does anyone know if any DVD players out there support playback of avi files natively? That is, if I have a CD or DVD with .avi files copied from my computer - are any DVD players capable of playing these back without me having to burn them as SVCD or DVD format first? I know that the PS3 and...
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    AIM 6.5 and Vista

    A friend of mine just got a new laptop with vista. I helped her set everything up but for some reason IM windows sometimes don't show up. For example, I IM her and she sees it in the bottom right AIM notification window but can't see the actual message. Other times when I double click her SN an...
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    Alt Tab Lag

    I was recently playing World of Warcraft on a friend's computer I was shocked at how smooth his alt tab was. When I alt tab from the game I normally deal with 2-4 seconds of a black screen and then maybe another 1 second of the computer just being a little slow. Same with tabbing back into...
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    Computer randomly shuts off

    I just bought a new video card and i've been having major issues I have an MSI k8n neo-4 mobo with a amd64 3000+. I have a COOLMAX CX-450 ATX 450W Power Supply that I bought off newegg a couple years back. I just bought a new Radeon 1950XT to replace my old 6600GT. When i put the card in, my...
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    SATA vs IDE?

    Hey, my current hard drive is about to die so that has unexpectedly put me in the market for a new one. I see all sorts of info on newegg about SATA, PATA interfaces. I guess I'm just outdated in that the last time I bought hard drives everything was just IDE. The motherboard I currently have...
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    Microphone acting funny

    I was talking over Ventrilo the other day while playing a game and I noticed a curious problem with my microphone: No one could hear me when I would talk EXCEPT if I went to control panel and opened up the Speech menu. While this menu was open, people could hear me fine. When i closed it...
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    Modem was acting as a router and now...

    My setup for the past few months has been this: Wellstar 6100 Modem plugged into a Belkin Wireless G Router. That router has 2 cables running to 2 different desktops plus a couple laptops that pick up wireless signal from it. everything worked great until I decided to untangle some cables...
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    Media players don't work correctly during games

    When I'm playing World of Warcraft and I try to alt tab to watch a video on WMP, WMPclassic, or any other media player I get the sound but no image. If I close the game, the video will play perfectly. This used to never be an issue and I'm not sure what's changed between now and then. I tried...
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    Northbridge fan makes noise

    My MSI K8N Neo mobo after being moved from home to college makes a lot of noise from the Northbridge fan. I unplugged the fan but I'm not sure whether it's safe to run the mobo without it. Any ideas? (Running a non oc'd AMD64 3000+)
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    Major artifacts after a crash

    Yesterday morning, after playing World of Warcraft for about 10 hours, my computer crashed. I was tired so i just shut it off and went to sleep. When i woke up and tried to play it, I had serious artifact issues in WoW. I'm not entirely sure if the game was crashing but it got to the point where...
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    Using laptop as a wireless access point

    At my vacation house I have a wired router and I wanted to set up wireless for my friends through my laptop by making it act as a wireless router. Is this possible?
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    Which laptop is better at the same price?

    My school forces me to get a new laptop and I have these two as my options: Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad T43 Pentium M 1.86 GHz 60 GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM 1 GB RAM 14.1" SXGA+ Color Screen 64MB ATI Mobility RADEON x300 CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive (CD Burner) 10/100/1000 Ethernet 802.11a/b/g...
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    Clear the last 3 used passwords for XP

    I had forgotten to enable "password never expires" under computer management and now I was forced to change my password. Windows, however, does not want to let me use any of my 3 previous passwords. How do I clear this/go around it? Note: I am not on a domain so this is, in fact, windows forcing...
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    Prevent OS restart in XP?

    Most installs ask "would you like to restart your computer?" and the answer is, invariably, no. However, sometimes I'm clicking too fast and i click yes by mistake. Is there any way to disable software dialog boxes from being able to restart winxp pro? That is, I want the only way to restart my...
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    Data recovery tools

    My hard drive is nearly dead, the boot volume is unmountable and there is massive data corruption. I have had some success with GetDataBack for NTFS, does anyone have any other utils they could suggest?
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    Hard drive recommendation for 24/7 operation?

    In the past 2 years I've had 4 hard drives go essentially dead on me. In between the first and second pair i completely changed my system so it leads me to believe that the issue is coming from never actually shutting my computer off (ie: computer running for 4 months without a reboot). Are...
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    Memory suggestion for dual channel mobo

    When i bought my MSI K8N motherboard I didn't realize that it only supported 1,2 or 4 sticks of RAM in at once. In turn, I had to remove one of my sticks of 512MB Corsair XMS pc3200 RAM. I've noticed a slowdown in certain areas in performance and rather than stay at 1GB, I've decided to upgrade...
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    All WinXP applets stopped working

    i was installing some updates from my college's deployment site; while Office SP1 was going, i tried downloading the Ad-Aware SE PRO install...it gave me an error about 2 going at once so I waited for office to finish, tried again, nothing happened...decided to restart. Now whenever i attempt to...
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    nforce4 LAN will not stay connected

    I've been troubleshooting this mobo all night and I'm stuck at one last problem - it won't stay connected to the internet. Removing the network cable can sometimes get me ~1 minute of network connectivity but then it seems to lose its connection - when i try to repair it, it can't contact the...
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    3 sticks of RAM in a k8n neo4?

    I have 3 RAM sticks: all 512MB of Corsair XMS pc3200 My new mobo, the k8n neo4 seems to only want to recognize 1,2, or 4 sticks. Is this an absolute limitation (if so, why?) or is there a workaround? When i tried to connect 3 sticks in the first 3 dimms, it did not recognize the one in the...
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    Fixed one problem, got another

    Just got in some new parts. Winchester 3200+ and a MSI K8N Neo4 mobo. Edit: Just got everything connected (first few posts are about that issue). WinXP goes through loading screen and right before it gets to the login screen i see a blue screen flash before me. It restarts too quickly for...
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    Windows Media Player lost a feature

    any WMP 9/10beta users have this happen to you: you right click on the album picture under the Now Playing on and uncheck show. It dissapears with seemingly no way to bring it back. You'd think you could right click and recheck it except: Where the heck do you right click, the field is gone!? I...
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    True power usage of a computer

    This question should have been simple; as it turns out, it's not. A certain engineering friend of mine laughed when I told him i had a 430W PSU on my computer. He pointed out that they use much smaller PSU's on things which probably require much more power. We decided to put our words into...
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    Suggest an upgrade?

    Ok, I have a problem; my computer just doesn't multitask fast enough anymore. I'm the kind of person who, if he can physically remember what's going on in another window, will open said window. Unfortunately, my computer is now just getting too slow when I try to run Norton virus scan, a DVD...
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    Circumventing max resolution on a monitor

    Is there a way to display 1600x1200 on monitors spec'd for a native/max resolution of 1280x1024? Quality is not a concern here; neither is refresh rate or response time. I simply would like to know if there is a workaround that would allow more raw window space.
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    Min system requirements for a video card?

    My friend who is an avid internet poker player wants to do dual monitors so that he can play more hands at once. The easiest solution for him would be an AGP card that supports dual VGA. I checked newegg and I found a GF 5200 that seems to meet his needs. However, it notes that it requires a p3...
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    Internet Explorer in Mandrake?

    Though I much prefer firefox for my regular browsing, there are a few sites I use which only work on internet explorer. I used Mandrake a couple years ago and I'd like to go back but I need some advice on how to be able to access these sites. The various options which strike me are: 1)...
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    Windows stuck at title screen for 5 minutes!

    For some reason, windowsXP pro is taking forever to boot up. Once it boots, I experience no noticeable delays or slowdowns. I have recently installed a new second HD (new WD 160GB) which may or may not be contributing to this problem. Perhaps more salient is the fact that, while this is...
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    How to password directories

    I often let people use my computer while I'm not there. However, i would rather that they didn't have access to certain directories such as my personal tax documents. Is there an easy way to password protect folders (either with some windows feature or some third party program) on my hard drive...
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    How do I disable the Promise Controller

    When my computer is booting I get the messages "No device detected" and "No BIOS installed." Otherwise the comp runs fine and I have reason to believe that the Promise Controller is what's causing them to appear. However, I can't find a way to disable it in my BIOS. This is on an MSI K8T mobo...
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    New AMD64 comp won't POST

    My friend and I have just finished assembling his new PC and it doesn't seem to do much at startup. The PSU fan spins; the CPU fan spins; a green LED comes on in the corner of the motherboard. I don't hear any beeps and there doesn't seem to be any kind of error code LED thing on the...
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    Good time to upgrade?

    My friend has a pretty shotty computer. It's some old P3 with 128 RAM. It doesn't really deliver *acceptable* performance in games like Warcraft3 for him and he's looking to buy a new computer. I said I'd look into it and help him build it. He has about 950 dollars and he won't be needing...
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    How to repeatedly mouseclick in one spot

    Hey; I have a program that doesn't have an auto reconnect feature so I need to simulate the action of mouse clicking on a certain (constant) place on the screen every X number of minutes. I know that there used to be anti idle programs floating around that did this; can anyone recommend me...
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    How do I make a non obtrusive DOS partition?

    I've been getting pretty aggrevated recently about XP's lack of a real base OS. I was thinking that a bootable DOS partition might be the answer i want. I wouldn't need it for anything else except accessing things that XP has issues with. However, i don't want a dual boot screen or anything...
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    WD Hard drives going haywire!!

    I own two WD 80Gb special edition hard drives. In the past 5 months, both have malfunctioned. My computer restarts, makes some "dying animal noises," has issues detecting the drives, etc. Eventually, I always manage to get the computer booted up and whichever hard drive died is detected as...
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    What DVD Burning Software to use?

    I just bought a LiteOn LDW-411S. I was wondering what are the better DVD burning applications. The cost of the software is *not an issue.* For CD burning i used Nero, Roxio 6, and CloneCD/DVD. All of these programs have DVD burning features but I'm not sure whether they're good. What do you guys...
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    Which CD drive should i get rid of?

    I just got a Lite On ldw411s 4x DVD +/- burner for sale on 'black friday.' My computer only fits two internal cd drives so i gotta get rid of something. My other two drives are: Lite On 16x DVD-ROM Lite-On 48x24x48 CDRW The DVD burner also functions as a 40x24x40 CDRW so I was thinking of...