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    Need a Security Suite Recommendation

    Can anyone recommend a good security suite from one provider that would offer anti-virus, firewall, and anti-spyware? I'm thinking about going with Kaspersky but I know there are lots of other good ones out there as well like ESET, ZoneAlarm Pro, etc. Thanks for any suggestions!
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    Strange Hard Drive Activity

    Sometimes when I have my PC on my hard drive will just take off with a bunch of activity. The activity light starts flickering on and off and I can hear the drive making noises like data is being accessed or written. This will go on for usually 3-5 minutes non-stop and then it pretty much gets...
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    How Hard Is It to Network a Mac and a PC?

    I know very little about networking but I'm thinking about buying a Mac (mainly just for fun and for something to do) and trying to network it together with my desktop PC. Can anyone give me an idea of what exactly this involves? I know it's a bit more than just buying a router and hooking...
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    Can I Use Western Digital Diagnostic Tools

    I replaced my Western Digital HD with a Seagate (nothing wrong with the WD, just wanted to try something different). I've already downloaded and used the Seagate HD diagnostic tools on my new Seagate drive but I still have my old WD diagnostic tools. Do you think it would hurt a Seagate hard...
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    Leaving a PC on at Night

    I heard a PC security expert say on a radio show that it's a bad idea to leave a PC on when you're not around it (like leaving it on at night when you sleep). Does that make sense? Are you more vulnerable to getting hacked if you're away from your PC at night for 6-8 hours as compared to if...
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    XP Pro is Creating User Accounts By Itself

    This has happened twice this week. I'll walk away from my PC for an hour or two and come back and I see the blue log-in screen with my current administrator account and a BRAND NEW account right next to it that I did not create! The first account that was created by itself was called "iisuser"...
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    Messages Disappearing From Outlook IN Box

    In the last few days I've noticed something very odd in my Outlook IN Box. I'm running XP Pro with MS Office 2002 installed and in the past week three messages in my IN Box have simply vanished. I'm 100% certain that I am not deleting them myself. I'm not a PC expert but I consider myself to...
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    Vista Upgrade Certificate Problems

    Has anyone had any luck redeeming their Vista Upgrade Certificate that is given to anyone who buys a new PC with XP between October 27, 2006 and March 31, 2007? I bought a new PC in December 2006 with XP Pro so I can upgrade now to Vista Business (OEM Version) for a very nominal fee ($12.94)...
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    Do I Need A Sound Card?

    I have an Intel DG965WH motherboard (link) that has onboard sound (8-channel (7.1) audio subsystem using the SigmaTel* STAC9271 audio codec). Does anybody know if my onboard sound supports surround sound speakers (4 speakers and a subwoofer) or should I buy a sound card instead? Also, does...
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    Gigabyte 3d Aurora Case

    This case has 2 rear 120mm exhaust fans and 1 front 120mm intake fan. All three fans have blue LED lights on them. The fan in the front stays solid 24/7 while the two fans in the back blink whenver the PC is on. Does anyone know why the two rear LED fans are blinking instead of staying solid...
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    LCD Monitor Advice Needed

    I've been using a pretty good Mitsubishi 19" CRT (Diamond Plus 91 flat screen) for a number of years but I'm now ready to jump into the world of LCD monitors. Can someone recommend something for around $750 give or take $100? One of my friends is recommending the Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP...
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    SETI Email Server Hacked?

    The email is from this sender: Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Dan Werthimer [donors@ssl.berkeley.edu] It has nothing in the body of the email but there are 7 attachments (.txt, .gif, .jpg, and .html files). The .txt file is named seti_letter.txt. I'm on the SETI email distro list so I wonder...
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    BOINC Security Issues?

    I've been thinking about joining one of the BOINC projects using my home PC but all of the IT people where I work say distributed computing projects aren't safe. They say that technically you don't really know what the project is downloading to your computer, what it's actually doing when it's...
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    Hard Drive Question for Security Experts

    Okay, here's one for the hard drive security experts out there. I have an external hard drive on a USB port that I'm going to trade to a friend for a video card upgrade. If I move (not delete, but move) all of the files off the external HD and do an NTFS format does that do enough in terms of...
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    Hard Drive Activity During DVD Viewing

    Hey...whenever I watch a Netflix DVD on my computer my DVD light will flicker off and on every few seconds but my hard drive light flickers off and on NON-STOP the entire time the DVD is playing. I use PowerDVD to watch movies. Does anyone know why this is? I would think just the video card...
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    External Hard Drive Power Failure

    Last night I had to leave my PC on (something I do once or twice a week) but when I got up today I noticed the power light on my Western Digital "My Book" external hard drive was out and it wasn't showing up under My Computer either. I removed the power cord from the back of the drive, plugged...
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    Really Bizarre Hard Drive Problem

    I have an 80GB HD that up until tonight had over 60GB of free space. I booted up my PC a few minutes ago and got a message from Windows that I was dangerously low on free space. So, I went to My Computer and saw a file I've never seen before with the following name: ~rwc{}$$.rwd This file...
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    Slow Boot-Up Time and HD Clicking Noise

    Is this the sign of a HD that's about to die? My PC is 3.5 years-old and takes about 6-7 minutes to boot-up completely. It used to only take less than 1 minute. This is something that only started about two weeks ago. I reformatted my HD and reinstalled my entire system three months ago...
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    Is This A Good Price For A PC Built By Local Store?

    I'm thinking about buying my third PC from a local store and was wondering if you guys think these are fair prices. The store's website is Here All the components at the bottom stay the same. The price just changes depending on the processor you select. They use generic RAM and power...
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    Vista Beta-2 Software Question

    I'm thinking about installing Vista Beta-2 when it becomes available to the public on 5/27 but I have a question. Do you think my anti-virus software (McAfee), anti-spyware software (Webroot), and firewall software (Zone Alarm) would actually work in Vista? I'm guessing they probably...
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    Vista Beta-2 Install Question

    I'm thinking about installing Vista Beta-2 later this month when it's released to the general public (supposedly around 5/27). Does anyone know exactly how the install will work? For example, if I currently run XP Home will Vista install as an upgrade? Or, would it be better to reformat my...
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    Vista Beta 2 Minimum Requirements

    I'm thinking about downloading Vista Beta 2 later this month when it's supposed to be available to the general public (I believe 5/27 is the actual date). Do you think my system below will be able to run it okay? From what I've been able to read, I'm just barely at the minimum requirements...
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    Windows / Mac / Linux

    Does anyone have any exact numbers on how much of the home computer market these three companies own? Is it something like: Windows - 85% Mac - 12% Linux - 3% I'm not talking about business servers...just the home PC market. Thanks...just curious. :cool:
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    How Can I Stress My Computer?

    Okay, here's the situation. My PC is three years-old this month and I'd really like to replace it. However, for what I use it for it works perfectly. All I need it for is to surf the web and work on projects for school and work (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). I hardly do any gaming at all, but...
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    Terabyte Hard Drives

    A few weeks ago I started a thread about terabyte hard drives and how much longer it might be before we see them on the shelves. Anyway, I just found this article discussing this very topic that I thought you might find interesting: Terabyte Hard Drives
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    Terabyte Hard Drives

    I mean just regular end users like you and me? Maybe in 12-18 more months? I guess it's going to happen at one point, sooner or later....
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    DVD/CD Burning Tool

    Sorry...I know this probably belongs in the software forum but this forum seems to get more traffic so I posted it here. My apologies! I was wondering if anybody could recommend a good CD/DVD burning software package. I?ve had mixed results with Roxio and Nero and would like to try...
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    Is My PC Upgradeable?

    I'm currently just using my 2.5 year-old PC for web surfing and working with MS Office documents, but I'd like to get into gaming. Based on the specs of my current PC below, would you recommend upgrading some of the components or just buying/building a whole new rig? Is there any way I could...
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    Password Cracking Software

    Does anybody know of any software out there that can guess passwords continuously and rapidly? I think they?re called ?password hurlers?. I use encryption software on my computer and would like to play around with trying to crack some of the passwords that protect the encrypted volumes on my...
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    What Games Can I Play With This Video Card?

    My PC will be 3 yrs-old next month and it only has an nVidia GeForce4 MX-440 Video Card with 64 MB of RAM. I have a P4, 2.4 GHz CPU, 512MB of PC2100 RAM, and an 80GB HDD. I know...it's definitely nothing to brag about. Anyway, are there any auto racing sims, first person shooters, or war...
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    Will You Buy MS Vista

    Just curious...my PC will be 3 years-old when Vista comes out towards the end of this year and I'm debating whether or not to replace it with a new PC running Vista. Most people say don't do it...anything brand new from MS always has bugs in it...what do you guys think?
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    Do I Need A Registry Cleaner?

    Is it a good idea to run a registry cleaner now and then on your system? My current PC is two years-old and runs like a Swiss watch, so I'm wondering if I even need it. I defrag my hard drive with Diskeeper and PerfectDisk every 2-3 days and I also run Check Disk once a week. In two years, I've...
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    Do I Need A Registry Cleaner?

    Is it a good idea to run a registry cleaner now and then on your system? My current PC is two years-old and runs like a Swiss watch, so I'm wondering if I even need it. I defrag my hard drive with Diskeeper and PerfectDisk every 2-3 days and I also run Check Disk once a week. In two years...
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    ?No drive entries found!? When I Boot PC

    I just used a disk defragmenting utility that, in addition to defragging the regular files on the hard drive, can also defrag the paging file, metadata, master file table, and hibernate file at boot up. After it defragged all of these files, my PC now gives me a messages for about 3 seconds...
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    Watching Movies On My PC

    I got a DVD/RW a few weeks ago but every time I try to watch a movie on it I get this message that I'm missing some sort of codec utility or plug-in and the movie won't play. Do I need to install additional software like PowerDVD to watch movies? Right now I just have Nero installed so I can...
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    Need Advice on a $2,000 Desktop

    I'm trying to build an ultra-fast desktop PC. I?d like something that boots up really fast, shuts down really fast, moves/deletes/renames/finds files really fast. I'll mainly just be using MS Office software for college projects. No gaming or video editing. No music. Just a workstation that I...
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    What Mobo For a SCSI HD?

    I'm thinking about buying a system with a 15K SCSI hard drive. Can someone recommend some motherboards that support SCSI technology? Don't I need a special mobo for that? Thanks!
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    Best Case For Cooling

    I'm going to be buying a new PC in a few more months and my primary concern is going to be cooling. Between the two cases in my message title, which do you think would be the best for cooling? I'm kinda thinking the Lian Li would be the clear choice but I've heard some pretty good feedback...
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    Do Computers Need Time To Warm-Up?

    I notice that immediately after my PC boots up and is ready to go that it takes a second or two longer to open documents, spreadsheets, start a browser, or pull email than it does if I start one of these processes after my PC has been running for about 15 minutes or so. Opening a Word doc might...
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    How Do I Create A Boot-Up Password

    Do I go into the system BIOS and set it that way? I want a password that won't let my PC even boot-up without it (before you even get to the Windows password in XP). Thanks.