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    HDD Vibration

    I built out my new rig in a Corsair Graphite 600T case (which is a dream to build in, very spacious). However, I'm getting a lot of vibration in the right side panel coming from my HDDs. I have 4 4 drives (1 SSD, 1 3T and 2x1T). The SATA power cable off my my Corsair HX 650 is hooked into...
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    Mfenn specs optimized for video encoding

    Mfenn, love your updated mid-range build specs. My budget I can stretch up a few hundred more, maybe $1300. How would you optimize or enhance your build specs for a primarily video encoding rig? I will do some gaming still. Worth considering an i7 over the i5? Thanks, Seismik
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    Best way to re-add an XP machine to AD after Win2003 Server Failure

    Hi all, I am just recovering from a major server crash - system RAID array failed completely, 2 bad drives, and I had to restore my C: partition from a drive image that is about 2 weeks old. In those two weeks I have added about 6 laptops to the domain - but obviously these accounts won't be...
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    Resize SATA RAID System Partition, Server 2003

    Hi, I've got a Dell server (just a little guy, PowerEdge SC1420) and it has a 12GB (1 GB Free) system partition (C:) with 130GB D: drive (119 GB Free). Running Windows 2003. C: is filling up, I'm not sure why it was ever made so small to begin, but it also holds all program files. Keep in...
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    Optimal HDD Setup Help

    Pretty basic, I'm running XP, C2D 2.66, 2 GB Ram, a GeForce 8800 GTS video card and 2 Seagate 500GB 7200RPM 32MB SATA II drives on an Asus P5B Deluxe mobo. Right now I just have the drives setup as a single partition on each, C: is the first, D: is the second. I want to improve performance as...
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    Image single SATA drive onto a RAID array?

    Hi, I've currently got XP installed on single, massive C: partition which takes up my entire drive - it's 500GB. I have an Asus P5B Deluxe mobo, which can support SATA RAID, so I want to try going to RAID-0. Not sure how to best do it... can I image my existing installation and then build...
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    Harddrive Silencer

    Hi, I've got a new rig built with the specs in my sig, and a Seagate 500GB SATA HDD. This is all built in my Coolermaster Praetorian, so the drive sits front right with only a mesh grill in front of it. The rest of my rig is very quiet, but the drive is pretty loud and I'm thinking about...
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    Home Theatre PC

    I am thinking of building a home theatre system instead of buying a traditional system. But I'm wondering what the best video option is for it... something like an ATI All In Wonder x600 Pro? Ideally it would be nice to have the sytem with a video card that offers an HDTV tuner to it's 3D...
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    Soltek 86SP3-L dead, what to replace it with?

    It's been awhile (like 2 years!) since I did my homework on motherboards... I've got a P4 2.66GHz 533 FSB proc, 2x512 sticks of Corsair PC3200 RAM, an Audigy soundcard and an All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro graphics card. Oh, and a malfunctioning Soltek motherboard I need to replace. What can ya'll...
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    System booting problems

    Hey, having some worrisome problems with my system. I shut it down every night, and lately when I boot it up in the morning it usually freezes part way through the boot, usually when it's about to put up the XP user sign in page. Just a total freeze, no blue screen or anything. I hit reset...
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    XP Failing On Boot

    In the last two or three days -- no hardware changes or software updates, my system is hanging on booting up XP. No errors, it just freezes and sits there... usually on a black screen or right after the screen goes blue before the user logon. When it happens I just hit the reset button and...
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    Automate Defrag with XP Pro SP2

    I've got no special software, I generally just use the defragger built into XP. I would like to be able to schedule it to run and defrag my drives once a week or so -- is there any way I can do it? Do I need special software? seis
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    Missing channels on All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro

    Hi, My cable connectino comes into my place in my living room, from there I have a splitter than sends one cable to the TV and the other to my computer in the den. All of my channels come in on the TV, but on the All-In-Wonder in my computer I'm missing a number of them. When I manually...
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    IIS After SP2?

    Hi. Fresh copy of XP SP1, installed it without IIS (wasn't really paying attention to it at that point). Then put on SP2, all good. Now I went to add IIS and it asks for my XP SP2 CD-ROM which I don't have... I've just got one for SP1. So I tell it to proceed anyway, and after two files it...
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    BEST way to create DVD slideshows of digital pics

    Any thoughts on the best way to go about creating a DVD with images from my digital camera? I've got Roxio Media Creator 7, so I've tried going that route but I'm not terribly impressed with the results -- it works, but the images are all 5+ megapixels and don't show up quite as nice on the...
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    IP Monitoring Tool

    The summary says it all -- looking for a simple little app to monitor my WAN address which seems to change rather frequently on DSL. All I need is it to update every few minutes and email me when it changes and what to. I ran IP Monster for awhile, but after SP2 I had some problems with it...
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    Editing JPEG meta data

    I've begun the painstaking process of digitizing my film pictures... it's a pain in the ass but the benefits are worth it to me. I use Adobe Photoshop Album to manage my digital collection, and when I started importing my scanned photos I realized I had a bit of a problem -- the date of the...
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    MSN Passport Screwed?

    Anyone else having problems logging into MSN Messenger / Hotmail / any Passport site today? When I try to login I get the "Microsoft® .NET Passport was temporarily unable to complete your request. Please try again later." What an annoyance!! Side note, I've been having problems with...
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    Extract video clips from DVD - put them together on a new DVD... how?

    Hi there, from the topic you can tell what I need to do. I've got 3 DVDs that contain video of some focus groups (work stuff -- if there's a copyright on any of the material I own it). I would have thought there was an easy way to grab pieces of DVD video, but I can't figure it out yet -- I...
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    XP SP2 - Explorer crashing on video file highlight

    Hi, When I highlight a file to copy it, move it, delete it, whatever in Windows Explorer I get a ActiveMovie Window: explorer.exe - Application Error, and it crashes. I guess I've probably got a corrupt video codec or something like that? But how can I identify which one, and how to fix it...
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    Can't connect to FTP

    Hi, I run Blackmoon FTP server, the free version on my PC at home so that I can easily transfer files back and forth from that machine. Pretty standard stuff, it's running on port 21 and I've made my PASV range 8000-9000. On my Linksys BEFSR41 router I've got UPnP turned on, and I've also...
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    Best software for creating photo albums

    Hi, looking for recommendations on photo album software. Right now I manually manage all my digital photos, basically just putting them in dated folders. When I want to make a web gallery of images, I use the Batch/Web Photo Gallery utility in Photoshop 7. It's decent, but the resulting web...
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    Annoying icon scramble resulting from Remote Desktop

    Hi, I remote desktop into my 1152x864 desktop from a 1024x768 desktop. This is from work to home. I'm always logged on as myself at home. I remote desktop logon as myself from work and when I get home my Welcome screen is showing with the select user Dialog. I pick me, logon and everything...
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    Best way to boot for BIOS updates, firmware, ect.

    I just went through the process of updating my motherboad BIOS, and then a few days later my DVDR firmware, both requiring booting to DOS and then running the appropriate files from there. As my system is XP, my Win98 boot disk wouldn't recognize my NTFS partitions, so I had to copy everything...
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    Easy Media Creator 7 - CPU Usage

    Just went out and bought Easy Media Creator 7 -- installed it, works beautifully. I burned a few discs and then noticed the task manager CPU meter maxed out, 100%. So I burned a few more and kept a close eye on it -- starts around 10% and slowly works it's way up while writing. After the...
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    Rookie Problem - Annoying

    Something is up with my IE lately... when using EBay, I sign in initially, and then it seems almost any navigation to any page prompts it to ask me to sign in again, and so on, and so on. What am I missing here? My cookies are open to accept all right now and that isn't working, I've had the...
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    Windows XP Automated Backups

    I've got XP Pro, with two harddrives both 120GB. The second drive is purely for backup... I'd like to schedule a back up of my first drive to the second drive daily. Is there an easy way to do this with XP? Or do I need 3rd party software? If so, what is recommended? seis
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    IPOD plug into any PC and transfer songs?

    I've got a friend who wants to bring over their Ipod to plug into my PC and get a few mixes I've made -- I've got a Creative Nomad Zen NX and it needs special software to allow it to communicate with a PC, won't work without that software, does an Ipod work the same way? Or can it plug into any...
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    MSN signed in at another location

    I boot up my home PC in the morning, but I don't log in to MSN, or if I do I logout when I'm done. I go to work and log into from there and throughout the day I keep getting 'You're signed out because you've been signed in at another location'. I've changed my password repeatedly, I'm fairly...
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    Remove Common Name Toolbar

    Hi, a friend was complaining about IE getting hijacked, bad search results, ect... so I put Spybot S&D on his system and it found pages full of offenders. Among the list of ones it couldn't fix was 'Common Name Toolbar'. So we had Spybot start at startup as it recommends, but it still couldn't...
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    Cheapest quality system to surf and burn

    A friend wants to buy a comp, all he's ever going to do is surf the web and make CDs... just wondering if you guys think building a value system like that is worth it or if you get better value from a bundle from a big retail computer store. My thinking is that if I were to build one for him...
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    Outlook 2003: Hotmail Error

    I've got Outlook 2003 hooked up to my Hotmail account, and for the last couple days I'm getting the error: Task 'Hotmail: Folder:Inbox Synchronizing headers.' reported error (0x80004005) : 'Outlook's request to the server failed. The server responded ''. ' Anyone know how to fix this?
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    "Wearable" Video Camera

    For a work project I need to track down (ASAP!) a wearable video camera system. The system would have to be able to record at least a few hours of video at a time. In my searches I've come across the system by DejaView, I think it's their "100" system that looks perfect except that it isn't on...
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    Where to get extra cables for Creative Zen NX?

    I've got a Creative Zen NX, and I'd like a power adapter cable for my car. I don't need the cassette piece though, so I don't really want to buy Creative's package that costs $39 or whatever -- my car stereo has a line in that I plug the Zen into. It seems like there must be some sort of...
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    Dampen Drive Vibration

    I would like to dampen the vibration from my optical drives. I've heard of people doing this by putting rubber washers on the drive screws. I don't know what size washers I should buy, and what thickness. Will my local Home Depot have what I'm looking for or are they specialized pieces I'll...
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    PC Gamepads

    I've currently got a Gravis Eliminator Shock gamepad that I use for Madden 2004, NHL 2004... games that need gamepads. My Shock controller is about 3 years old and I want to get something new, but I need 4 trigger buttons, dual analog sticks and at 4 buttons on the front in the standard cross...
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    How to identify the component slowing me down?

    I've got a pair of NEC Versa LXi laptops that were once decent computers. They're both P3-450MHz Intel CPUs, with 256MB RAM, 8MB integrated video systems and 17GB harddrives. They run 2000/XP very slowly, and I'd like to upgrade them a little (if it's worth it) to speed them up -- problem is I...
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    All In Wonder TV looks a little grainy

    I've had an ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro for awhile, but never got around to playing with the TV functionality of the card until just recently. I've got standard cable plugged into the card via coax straight from the wall outlet. The quality of the TV picture looks a little grainy, certainly not...
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    DirecTV -> AIW 9700 Pro

    I've got both cable and DirecTV satellite. Hooking cable up to my All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro was no problem, easily watch and record TV shows on my PC. But now I'm wondering if there's a way to hook DirecTV up to my PC so I can record from there. I'm guessing that there's no way, as the AIW card...
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    Too many freakin' email accounts!!

    This is a common problem I'm sure most people have had to deal with... I've just switched broadband Internet providers, so I've got my old email account forwarding to the new one. Then I've got an MSN email address, and finally one of those Bigfoot 4 Life email addresses that was supposed to...