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  1. Otrant

    System upgrade advice

    Thanks for the advice, will be curious how pricing of the GTX 1050 Ti shakes out. For a potential video card upgrade, I was able to find an ASUS Dual Radeon RX 480 4G OC (DUAL-RX480-O4G) for $170 CDN ($130 US). Comparing against GPU hierarchy charts I have seen, this seems like a very good...
  2. Otrant

    System upgrade advice

    Hi all, I am looking for some system upgrade advice on a budget, hoping to spend around $300-350 CDN or $230-270 USD or so at most. The games I play are not particularly demanding graphically, examples include Overwatch, Hearts of Iron 4, Football Manager 2016, and CS:GO. However, I have...
  3. Otrant

    Advice on new value gaming system build

    Hi everyone, I am looking to put together a new value gaming PC for the holidays. I live in Canada and have had good experiences using a local vendor for my last few builds, so would like to use them again. My budget is around $800-900 CDN before tax. I already have dual 24"/22" inch...
  4. Otrant

    Refresh rate stuck at 30 hz after re-install

    Hi everyone, I recently installed a fresh copy of Windows Vista 64-bit. Everything is great except for one of my monitors on a dual monitor setup. I have a BenQ E2200 and a BenQ V2410. I'm able to get both monitors to display at their native resolution of 1920 x 1080, but the V2410 is...
  5. Otrant

    Useful little app for keeping windows "always on top"

    Just thought I'd share a useful little app called DeskPins, which allows you to pin windows and applications to stay on top. Really useful when you're writing a report and referring to a document in a browser, or PDF file, for example. Has definitely increased my productivity at work. If...
  6. Otrant

    OS for new rig?

    Vista 32bit will not utilize more than ~3GB of RAM. I built the system in my signature just a few weeks ago and was going through the same debate, and I'm very glad I chose to install Vista x64. Unless you are using some really obscure software where it's hard to find a replacement (i.e., some...
  7. Otrant

    Steam - Everything 10-75% off - Now Til Jan 2nd

    Thanks for the heads up - I hesitated over the TF2 $10 deal a few weeks ago, but picked it up this time. :thumbsup:
  8. Otrant

    [Retired] The LCD Thread

    I have not experienced any ghosting so far, but I don't have extensive experience with LCD's for gaming (I'm upgrading from a 19" Samsung CRT). So far I've played COD4, Company of Heroes, Colonization... no complaints there. The headphone jack is a nice touch for when my PS3 is hooked up to it...
  9. Otrant

    [Retired] The LCD Thread

    I can attest that the BenQ 22" E2200HD is a very solid monitor. Bought it for $205CDN at a local computer shop. Best computer related purchase I've ever made.
  10. Otrant

    New machine: NTLDR is missing

    I'm able to make it this far through the windows installation: http://www.blackviper.com/Arti.../images/image1_15.html When the computer reboots, instead of continuing with the install at this screen: http://www.blackviper.com/Arti...o/images/image2_2.html, I am prompted to format the drive...
  11. Otrant

    New machine: NTLDR is missing

    Thanks for your response Fardringle - I will try that when I get home. To clarify though, Windows XP never finished installing completely. I was able to format and install some files (DLLs, etc.) but never made it to the screen where you get to set the machines date and time, choose language...
  12. Otrant

    New machine: NTLDR is missing

    Update: I was able to boot to the Windows XP CD. I formatted the drive, and windows setup installed some files. Once these were installed, Windows setup prompted me that it was going to reboot in 15 seconds... everything seemed to be going smoothly. However, instead of continuing with...
  13. Otrant

    New machine: NTLDR is missing

    Well I certainly will do that if I can't find a fix, but it would save me some time if anyone has any suggestions.
  14. Otrant

    New machine: NTLDR is missing

    Hi everyone, I had the following machine assembled for me at a computer shop: Asus P5Q Core 2 Duo 3GHZ 4GB RAM 640 GB WD HD Samsung 22x DVD Upon trying to boot the PC, I get two messages: Adapter 1: Disk information No hard disk is detected! which is followed by: NTLDR is...
  15. Otrant

    Firefox Bookmarks Disappeared?

    Hey thanks for your reply Scott. I found the backup folder, I didn't know that it existed. I wouldn't dare abandon Firefox over this, so don't worry about that. I'm far too addicted to mouse gestures and several add-ons that make browsing with IE seem so painful in comparison. :) PS...
  16. Otrant

    Firefox Bookmarks Disappeared?

    Hi, So I turned on my computer today, loaded up Firefox and all of my bookmarks in the bookmarks folder and bookmarks toolbar are gone. Since there's easily close to 100 of them this is a real nuisance, so does anyone now what I can do to get them back? Thanks.
  17. Otrant

    Stand alone software MP3 player, does it exist?

    XMPlay sounds like what you're looking for. http://www.un4seen.com/ Specifically: No installation UnZIP where you want and go! Cheers.
  18. Otrant

    Gears of War Offical Thread

    Just to be thorough, the song in the commercial is Gary Jules - Mad World, which is a cover of the original song by Tears for Fears - Mad World. :)
  19. Otrant

    Windows won't boot

    Hi, Having a problem getting windows to boot up. Computer was running fine today, when I decided to patch BF2 to 1.3 (havn't played it for awhile) and afterwards I decided to defrag my computer. After that was done, everything was working fine, and I eventually powered off the system. Now...
  20. Otrant

    Newbie Alert: Installing DVD Burner

    Hey there, I bought a DVD Burner today, the BenQ 1620, and it's time to install it. As far as hardware installations go, I am relatively new, having only installed RAM and a sound card in the past. (Those were simple enough) :) Anyway, I just have a simple question: I'm looking at the...
  21. Otrant

    Having some trouble re-installing Win98 on a machine

    Downloaded boot disk, ran fdisk, deleted and recreated primary partition. Rebooted w/ CD Rom support. Still get "Bad command or file name" upon typing format c: from DOS prompt.
  22. Otrant

    Having some trouble re-installing Win98 on a machine

    Hi, I am having a bit of trouble re-installing windows 98 on an old machine. The computer boots to the DOS prompt, and the Win98 CD is in the drive, but when I try to run setup from the CD-Rom drive, it gives the error "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." I have also tried booting w/...
  23. Otrant

    World of Warcraft

    Tauren Shaman on PvP server. I played in the Open Beta on a PvE server, but I'm going to try PvP at retail. My reasoning: 1) I'll probably want a PvP character at some point, so it might as well be my first so it's my strongest. 2) On a PvP server, atleast you have the choice to either PvE...
  24. Otrant

    Any free prog to convert MP3 to WMA?

    Winamp
  25. Otrant

    A good music app that just plain sounds great?

    I use XMPLay, great little program and bloat-free. :) http://support.xmplay.com/
  26. Otrant

    Help with a statistics question....

    Ah... If this is a normal distribution, then one could use the table of standard normal probabilities, correct? In which case, I would simply need to locate (roughly) 90%, find the corresponding z-value, and then multiply that z-value by the standard deviation (which is SD sqrt(225) = 15...
  27. Otrant

    Help with a statistics question....

    Hi, Worth a shot asking this here, as there may be some people out there that have taken statistics courses. I need to answer the following question: An exam consists of 3 questions. In the past the instructor has learned that the time students take to complete the first question can be...
  28. Otrant

    firefox is really growing on me...

    The only negative I can think of is that certain webpages are coded to an "IE standard" rather then to the "HTML standard" (ie: poorly coded), which may make them render incorrectly. However, this is really only an issue with amateur-ish "personal" websites. Just about anything mainstream will...
  29. Otrant

    Program to split MP3s

    Hi, I have a MP3 file of ambient music that's about an hour long. Basically, I want to be able to split this one large file into smaller segments, so that I can easily skip through to various segments of this one long "song". I have heard of SoundForge, but this program seems to be overkill for...
  30. Otrant

    ==== Post COOL and USEFUL programs here!!! STICKIED ====

    Havn't read through all the posts, but for a nice program that can play a slew of audio files, try XMPLay. I dropped Winamp in a second when I found out about this program. (www.xmplay.com) There is a feature to "write to disk" anything being played. I find this very useful to record tracks...
  31. Otrant

    Skipping Windows Logon

    Awesome, thanks a bunch. Typing "control userpasswords2" at run prompt and unchecking "users must enter user name and p/w" solved it for any others wondering. Powertoys/TweakUI == garbage for not being able to do that. :) Cheers, -Otrant
  32. Otrant

    Skipping Windows Logon

    Hi, First off, I'm using Windows XP Professional, and I'm the only user on this PC. Anyways, at one time, when Windows would boot up, it would not prompt for user selection and would load the desktop. Then, I installed Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 (was a requirement for a program I installed)...
  33. Otrant

    Damn! Far Cry looks great on my new rig.

    Yeah, the game is so graphically awesome that I have a few screenshots that I cycle as my desktop wallpapers. :)
  34. Otrant

    Opera 7.52 Released!

    I also prefer Opera to Firefox. The Wand feature (a button at the top of the browser, located near the stop/refresh/ etc buttons) is great. It allows you to log onto pages with username/pw's instantly. The mouse gestures are great too for opening/closing/maximizing/minimizing tabs. For anyone...
  35. Otrant

    Best Game Thus Far?

    Can't believe nobody has mentioned Baldur's Gate II yet. As others have said, it's very hard to make a definitive list, but this game is so good it deserves a mention.
  36. Otrant

    BF1942: Brightness Problem

    Hi, Worth a shot asking here since I'm sure some of you play BF. Recently bought the BF1942: Anthology pack. My problem is, the game is way too dark and I need a way to adjust the brightness / gamma correction but there seems to be no option for that in the video settings. I have a Radeon...
  37. Otrant

    Getting new PC; PSU strong enough?

    Awesome, thanks for the quick responses guys. I feel better about my decision after running it by the experts. :)
  38. Otrant

    Getting new PC; PSU strong enough?

    Hi there, I'm ordering a new PC with the following components: Asus P4P800SE i865PE P4 2.8C Ghz 2x256 PC3200 RAM WD 120GB HD w/ 8mb cache Sapphire Radeon 9600 128mb LG 52x32x32/16x Combo drive Enermax 3051L-S3A case w/ generic P4 350W PSU My question is simply, is the PSU sufficient? I also...