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[TabletopTictacs]

So it seems that my 4 or 5 year old computer is finally starting to give up. My monitor has loads of artifacts.

I switched off my monitor yesterday (but left the computer turned on) to go out for a little while. When I got back, moving the mouse/pressing the keyboard wouldn't turn the monitor back on so eventually I did a hard reset.

Resetting the PC made the monitor work again but with loads of artifacts across the screen. I restarted again and it seemed to cure it for a while, but eventually the artifacts returned and I was unable to move the mouse, so I had to hard reset again. The next few times I turned my PC on, it would be fine until opening a relatively intensive program (Chrome, WMP etc.), where it would crash and the artifacts would return.

I tried doing a system restore but I still have the same problem. It's got a lot worse now as well as it barely boots up before the artifacts return.

I'm guessing (hoping!) that it's just a case of a dead video card, but thought I'd check with you guys to make sure buying a new card wouldn't be a waste of time/money. If I just need to buy a new PC I'm not completely screwed but it isn't exactly ideal...

Oh, I had my PC on in the background while writing this post and it's now on a restart loop for some reason, and the artifacts are there from the start now. That can't be good.

 

[MrBig]

So it seems that my 4 or 5 year old computer is finally starting to give up. My monitor has loads of artifacts.

I switched off my monitor yesterday (but left the computer turned on) to go out for a little while. When I got back, moving the mouse/pressing the keyboard wouldn't turn the monitor back on so eventually I did a hard reset.

Resetting the PC made the monitor work again but with loads of artifacts across the screen. I restarted again and it seemed to cure it for a while, but eventually the artifacts returned and I was unable to move the mouse, so I had to hard reset again. The next few times I turned my PC on, it would be fine until opening a relatively intensive program (Chrome, WMP etc.), where it would crash and the artifacts would return.

I tried doing a system restore but I still have the same problem. It's got a lot worse now as well as it barely boots up before the artifacts return.

I'm guessing (hoping!) that it's just a case of a dead video card, but thought I'd check with you guys to make sure buying a new card wouldn't be a waste of time/money. If I just need to buy a new PC I'm not completely screwed but it isn't exactly ideal...

Oh, I had my PC on in the background while writing this post and it's now on a restart loop for some reason, and the artifacts are there from the start now. That can't be good.

Artifacting is likely a result of the GPU dying, but at that age it could be anything. I'd get a new GPU and if problems persist the GPU can be used in a new computer you build.

 

[TabletopTictacs]

Artifacting is likely a result of the GPU dying, but at that age it could be anything. I'd get a new GPU and if problems persist the GPU can be used in a new computer you build.

The more I think about the more I think it's about time to just get a new PC. Thanks for the advice anyway

 

[RaginRoss]

Hey guys, looking for some heatsink related advice.

CPU - Intel Core i5-750 Quad Core 2.66GHz 8MB
Motherboard - Asus P7P55D-E,

Was cleaning my PC earlier today, and due to me being a clusmy bastard, I managed to break a couple of the little pegs that secure the heatsink to the motherboard. I've got it back in for now, but it's not being held quite as securely as it could be so i've got the case sitting sideways rather than upright (I'm monitoring the CPU temp closely just incase - that's fine for now, 34 Celsius)

So I'm looking to replace it with a new one, but not really sure what to get. I've done a bit of Googling and it seems like I can't just buy an exact replacement of this one from Intel(but I may be mistaken). There are loads of ones that claim to fit LGA 1156 socket CPU's, but I don't really know which brands to trust, or how to judge whether it is a good enough fan to adequately cool my CPU.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[Ianan]

GAF, I'm having the most annoying problem with my PC. Whenever I boot it up I have this unknown app that I cannot find any information on playing random clips of what sounds like TV shows and then clips of music through my speakers.

The app is not in my icon tray nor processors, any help would be great. (The app in question being Media Dashboard).

 

[MrBig]

Hey guys, looking for some heatsink related advice.

CPU - Intel Core i5-750 Quad Core 2.66GHz 8MB
Motherboard - Asus P7P55D-E,

Was cleaning my PC earlier today, and due to me being a clusmy bastard, I managed to break a couple of the little pegs that secure the heatsink to the motherboard. I've got it back in for now, but it's not being held quite as securely as it could be so i've got the case sitting sideways rather than upright (I'm monitoring the CPU temp closely just incase - that's fine for now, 34 Celsius)

So I'm looking to replace it with a new one, but not really sure what to get. I've done a bit of Googling and it seems like I can't just buy an exact replacement of this one from Intel(but I may be mistaken). There are loads of ones that claim to fit LGA 1156 socket CPU's, but I don't really know which brands to trust, or how to judge whether it is a good enough fan to adequately cool my CPU.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

CM Hyper 212+ is the best price/performance cooler currently available, but go here for other opinions.

GAF, I'm having the most annoying problem with my PC. Whenever I boot it up I have this unknown app that I cannot find any information on playing random clips of what sounds like TV shows and then clips of music through my speakers.

The app is not in my icon tray nor processors, any help would be great. (The app in question being Media Dashboard).

http://i.imgur.com/R46HQ.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

Kill it with fire. Back up your data and format, don't take chances.

 

[RaginRoss]

CM Hyper 212+ is the best price/performance cooler currently available, but go here for other opinions.

Thanks!

 

[Derrick01]

Best place to start tracking this down on Win7 is with the resource monitor



Found on the menu at Accessories\System tools (Although I always fire up task manager and start if from there).

Yeah I know about that but I just don't know how to read it or what would be abnormal. It had stopped doing it for a few days but it started doing it again today. No idea what's going on with this thing.

edit: Ok this is weird but is it possible my ps3 could be doing this? I just turned it off and my wireless adapter on my PC stopped blinking fast and my cached RAM went back to normal. I just don't know why ram stuff on my PC would be affected by my ps3 but now that I think about it I've noticed this happening when I've had that on.

edit 2: Probably just coincidence. I turned my ps3 on and played the same game I had on at the time and nothing happened.

 

[Seraphinianus]

Is there a way to manually download language packs for Windows 7 Home Premium? The pages I found just said that they'll come up as an Optional Update but they never have. I need a pack to display Japanese characters.

 

[xero273]

I tried googling this problem and the solutions i found were to change some registry setting but none of them work. My problem is on Windows 7 whenever I reboot my desktop icon positions and icon size are not saved. Usually they icons are set to small. When I reboot they would change to medium and the icons would in a different position from when I last had it. Anyone have an idea of how to fix this?

Thanks

 

[Derrick01]

Does anyone know of an easy way to just wipe the hard drive and start all over? I haven't decided to go that route yet but it would be nice to know for the future anyway.

 

[Jzero]

Does anyone know of an easy way to just wipe the hard drive and start all over? I haven't decided to go that route yet but it would be nice to know for the future anyway.

Are you going to be selling it or just want to do a basic wipe?

If you're going to keep it just format it.

 

[Derrick01]

Are you going to be selling it or just want to do a basic wipe?

If you're going to keep it just format it.

Yeah I'm going to keep it but I've never done that before (formatting) so I don't know how. The only times I had to start over was getting a new computer or hard drives dying and being sent new ones.

 

[UnluckyKate]

GAF problem : I used to browse gaf on Mac but now I'm on PC. Both Chrome.

On Mac, every pictures was a preview and mouse over would make it original size.

It's not working on PC. I have to click and hold the picture, making me unable to scroll around it to see it all if it's too big because I have to hold the clic. Halp !

 

[MrBig]

GAF problem : I used to browse gaf on Mac but now I'm on PC. Both Chrome.

On Mac, every pictures was a preview and mouse over would make it original size.

It's not working on PC. I have to click and hold the picture, making me unable to scroll around it to see it all if it's too big because I have to hold the clic. Halp !

Click and drag it a bit, it will retain its size until your next click.

 

[Jzero]

Yeah I'm going to keep it but I've never done that before (formatting) so I don't know how. The only times I had to start over was getting a new computer or hard drives dying and being sent new ones.

Do you have a windows CD/dvd?

 

[UnluckyKate]

Click and drag it a bit, it will retain its size until your next click.

draging don't work. That's the problem.

I used to just mouse over. Now I have to click, but can't drag around it.

I just installed the chrome extension and it's not working eiter

 

[Derrick01]

Do you have a windows CD/dvd?

I have my windows 7 disc if that's what you mean.

I think someone told me a year ago about something I think was called dban for like 100% erasing. I think I want to do a full wipe in case I have some virus on here that's not being picked up, just in case. That is if it doesn't make it more of a hassle to start over than just a format. I don't have much on here anyway so it wouldn't take that long to get everything back.

 

[PaulLFC]

I got my PC a couple of years ago when Blu-Ray drives were still quite expensive, so it has a Samsung DVD writer in it at the moment. I'd like to upgrade to Blu-Ray soon though as the prices have come down a lot.

I have almost zero PC building experience, so if I bought this drive for example, would it be as simple as just swapping out the DVD drive for the Blu-Ray drive, and I can do a straight swap of the cables from the DVD drive to the Blu-Ray drive, or does it need extra cables or steps to connect it?

Also, I'd primarily want the drive for watching Blu-Rays, but I've heard you can't play Blu-Rays out of the box without compatible software because of the Blu-Ray license or something - which software is the best to use? Are there any free options, or are they all paid programs?

Thanks

 

[Combichristoffersen]

Yeah I'm going to keep it but I've never done that before (formatting) so I don't know how. The only times I had to start over was getting a new computer or hard drives dying and being sent new ones.

You can use Active@ Killdisk to do a low-level format, or you can just boot the computer from a Windows disk to format the drive.

I have my windows 7 disc if that's what you mean.

I think someone told me a year ago about something I think was called dban for like 100% erasing. I think I want to do a full wipe in case I have some virus on here that's not being picked up, just in case. That is if it doesn't make it more of a hassle to start over than just a format. I don't have much on here anyway so it wouldn't take that long to get everything back.

The chances of you having some virus on the disk that wouldn't be done away with by a regular format are extremely slim (probably non-existant), so just boot from the Win7 disk and format the drive as NTFS

 

[MrBig]

draging don't work. That's the problem.

I used to just mouse over. Now I have to click, but can't drag around it.

I just installed the chrome extension and it's not working eiter

I don't use chrome for GAF, so I don't know if it translates directly. I mean drag the image as if you were to drag it to a folder and that will cause it to retain it's size after you click it, then use the middle click to free/mouse scroll around. Or just right click > middle click view image, to open the image in a new tab.

 

[Jzero]

I have my windows 7 disc if that's what you mean.

I think someone told me a year ago about something I think was called dban for like 100% erasing. I think I want to do a full wipe in case I have some virus on here that's not being picked up, just in case. That is if it doesn't make it more of a hassle to start over than just a format. I don't have much on here anyway so it wouldn't take that long to get everything back.

Well DBAN doesn't just erase the disk, it fills it with 1's and 0's so no data can be recovered but it takes a lot of hours and there's no point if you're going to re install windows in it. A quick format should do the trick.

 

[Derrick01]

Well DBAN doesn't just erase the disk, it fills it with 1's and 0's so no data can be recovered but it takes a lot of hours and there's no point if you're going to re install windows in it. A quick format should do the trick.

Ok I'll do it from the windows disc then. Thanks.

 

[gblues]

Ok I'll do it from the windows disc then. Thanks.

Disagree with above posters. While you don't need to do the DOD-level wipe, just doing a single-pass pattern wipe will make sure the previous data is "deleted enough" to avoid problems. A quick format will not completely erase info from the HDD.

 

[Cpt.Underpants]

Tech support gaf, I have a question

Got 2 hard drives, both a have an operating system in them and I only want to use my one hard drive as my master hard drive while the old one as my slave.

Can that be done on the BioS?

PS, my PC is an pre-built HP slimline pc about 5-6 years old

 

[runningjoke]

Tech support gaf, I have a question

Got 2 hard drives, both a have an operating system in them and I only want to use my one hard drive as my master hard drive while the old one as my slave.

Can that be done on the BioS?

PS, my PC is an pre-built HP slimline pc about 5-6 years old

If they are SATA drives you cannot set master/slave, that's all done automatically. You can most likely set the boot order/hard disk priority to get what you want.

 

[DesertEater]

TechSupport-GAF,
I just bought a new laptop. After using it for couple of days, I noticed that the "H" key on the keyboard doesn't work %10-20 of the time.
I don't think it depends on how it pressed. It just happens randomly it seems.
I was thinking of just returning it and getting another one, but I rather solve the problem than go through all the hassle.
Any ideas on how to solve this?

 

[Opus Angelorum]

If they are SATA drives you cannot set master/slave, that's all done automatically. You can most likely set the boot order/hard disk priority to get what you want.

Indeed, installing EasyBCD will allow you to remove the second boot entry:

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

 

[Moofers]

Hi GAF,

My father's laptop is having severe problems. Its an Acer Aspire 5610z and the HDD inside it was partitioned into C and D, with about 30GB each. He started getting messages telling him he was out of memory and it would kick him off the internet as result.

I got him a new HDD that was 350GB but the problem is when I installed it, it would lock up during the installation of a windows update (it runs Vista) and eventually it would just be stuck in a constant reboot sequence. The Acer logo would flash and then it would go dark, back to the Acer logo, then dark, etc. Nothing works after that except putting the install disc back in and starting it up again, but it just repeats the long setup cycle before getting hung up on that windows update and then the infinite reboot.

Somebody on GAF suggested the HDD I bought was bad, so I returned it and got another one, but the same thing happened with that.

So my solution for the time being was to turn off automatic updates and have him run everything the way it would be straight out of the box, but this has severely limited his internet surfing. No watching movies, no looking at facebook, etc. I don't know what to do anymore. His laptop is only 4 years old. I find it hard to believe he just needs to get a new one. There has to be some way to fix this, I just don't know it. Hopefully somebody here can tell me what to do. Thanks in advance!

 

[Moofers]

I see that my thread-killing ability remains intact. I'm starting to get desperate.

 

[Mattdaddy]

Got a question regarding hooking up my PC to my TV for gaming. My video card is an MSI 560Ti Twin Frozr.

Situation: I got an HDMI cable and attached a 50" panasonic plasma to my pc for gaming. It works great, but to get the game image on my TV I have to use the "clone" option within my Nvidia control panel, which puts the same image on both my pc monitor and my TV. So when I'm playing my game, it shows up on both the TV and my monitor simultaneously. If I try using the "extend" option, then games will only play on the monitor half of my desktop, I cant figure out how to move them to my TV half. This is fine, I don't mind using clone but it leads to my question:

Is this bad for my video card to be pushing the image to both screens simultaneously? I dont want to burn it up or something. Also are there going to be performance hits by doing so? I haven't really noticed any yet but it makes sense this might lead to fps drops.

 

[MrBig]

Got a question regarding hooking up my PC to my TV for gaming. My video card is an MSI 560Ti Twin Frozr.

Situation: I got an HDMI cable and attached a 50" panasonic plasma to my pc for gaming. It works great, but to get the game image on my TV I have to use the "clone" option within my Nvidia control panel, which puts the same image on both my pc monitor and my TV. So when I'm playing my game, it shows up on both the TV and my monitor simultaneously. If I try using the "extend" option, then games will only play on the monitor half of my desktop, I cant figure out how to move them to my TV half. This is fine, I don't mind using clone but it leads to my question:

Is this bad for my video card to be pushing the image to both screens simultaneously? I dont want to burn it up or something. Also are there going to be performance hits by doing so? I haven't really noticed any yet but it makes sense this might lead to fps drops.

Change the primary monitor to the TV while extended to play games on it.

Hi GAF,

My father's laptop is having severe problems. Its an Acer Aspire 5610z and the HDD inside it was partitioned into C and D, with about 30GB each. He started getting messages telling him he was out of memory and it would kick him off the internet as result.

I got him a new HDD that was 350GB but the problem is when I installed it, it would lock up during the installation of a windows update (it runs Vista) and eventually it would just be stuck in a constant reboot sequence. The Acer logo would flash and then it would go dark, back to the Acer logo, then dark, etc. Nothing works after that except putting the install disc back in and starting it up again, but it just repeats the long setup cycle before getting hung up on that windows update and then the infinite reboot.

Somebody on GAF suggested the HDD I bought was bad, so I returned it and got another one, but the same thing happened with that.

So my solution for the time being was to turn off automatic updates and have him run everything the way it would be straight out of the box, but this has severely limited his internet surfing. No watching movies, no looking at facebook, etc. I don't know what to do anymore. His laptop is only 4 years old. I find it hard to believe he just needs to get a new one. There has to be some way to fix this, I just don't know it. Hopefully somebody here can tell me what to do. Thanks in advance!

You're not really giving specifics so it is hard to help you. I don't know what you're on about with limiting what he can do on the internet without windows updates. Take out the old HDD, put a fresh install of Vista including all service packs (get ISO from digital river), or get him W7. As for the WU problem, it sounds like there was some corruption. If you can boot to safe mode run a restore to a point you know worked. Delete the update cache folder then run updates/get service packs.

 

[Mattdaddy]

Change the primary monitor to the TV while extended to play games on it.

God I hate being stupid. Thanks

 

[rCIZZLE]

Anybody here have experience with stripped screws in a laptop case? My first time doing some maintenance on my laptop and the very last screw had to be stripped.

Prefer if I could buy everything I need at walmart but any suggestions/solutions are welcome. Thanks!

 

[Jzero]

Anybody here have experience with stripped screws in a laptop case? My first time doing some maintenance on my laptop and the very last screw had to be stripped.

Prefer if I could buy everything I need at walmart but any suggestions/solutions are welcome. Thanks!

A customer stripped one of the little screws in his macbook and we had to cut the head off.

 

[rCIZZLE]

A customer stripped one of the little screws in his macbook and we had to cut the head off.

I'm not even sure that would work for mine since it's in there pretty deep. Anybody else?

 

[Cpt.Underpants]

If they are SATA drives you cannot set master/slave, that's all done automatically. You can most likely set the boot order/hard disk priority to get what you want.

Indeed, installing EasyBCD will allow you to remove the second boot entry:

http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

Thanks for this

Noted

 

[Kard8p3]

Ok so I'm having a problem with my External Hard Drive. I have a WD Elements 1TB hard drive and today the usb port got knocked loose. I opened it up and there's nothing wrong with the drive and nothing's chipped or anything it's just that the usb port got knocked off. Is there anyway to get it back on? If not can't a buy a new replacement board or whatever it's called and if so where? I really don't know much about any of this so if I could get some help I'd really appreciate it.

 

[infiniteloop]

Had something really weird just happen...
I'm sitting in my apartment working on my notebook wirelessly and the printer spits out two pages (I didn't print anything, I don't even have the printer added to my Mac). Both pages read:

GET http://proxyjudge.proxyfire.net/fastenv HTTP/1.1
Host: proxyjudge1.proxyfire.net
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0
Accept: *.*
Accept-Language: zh-cn
Connection: Keep-Alive

I found the following online:

Consensus: Some kid, also know a "script kiddie", at a internet cafe in China, is trying to use a proxy server to access your server and reached the print server.

Anything I should do to rectify this?

 

[Tamanon]

Had something really weird just happen...
I'm sitting in my apartment working on my notebook wirelessly and the printer spits out two pages (I didn't print anything, I don't even have the printer added to my Mac). Both pages read:

GET http://proxyjudge.proxyfire.net/fastenv HTTP/1.1
Host: proxyjudge1.proxyfire.net
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0
Accept: *.*
Accept-Language: zh-cn
Connection: Keep-Alive

I found the following online:



Anything I should do to rectify this?

I'm guessing you need to password protect your print server instead of the default one. That's all he checks.

 

[infiniteloop]

Thanks.

 

[Kard8p3]

Ok so I'm having a problem with my External Hard Drive. I have a WD Elements 1TB hard drive and today the usb port got knocked loose. I opened it up and there's nothing wrong with the drive and nothing's chipped or anything it's just that the usb port got knocked off. Is there anyway to get it back on? If not can't a buy a new replacement board or whatever it's called and if so where? I really don't know much about any of this so if I could get some help I'd really appreciate it.

Anyone?

 

[Grisby]

Hey guys my 4 year old laptop suddenly can't produce any noise. The little microphone symbol in the right hand desktop tool bar says, "No audio output device installed".

What?

 

[Tamanon]

Hey guys my 4 year old laptop suddenly can't produce any noise. The little microphone symbol in the right hand desktop tool bar says, "No audio output device installed".

What?

I recently had that happen to my laptop, something messed with the settings but a system restore to a previous from a few days ago re-enabled it. Can't hurt to try a small roll-back.

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

My laptop's hard disk crashed and I can't boot it. I tried to restore system but it says that I can't because I don't have back up even though I have my external HDD and I backed my laptop earlier. I tried to re-install windows, I press start installation but nothing happens. I tried to partition my HDD but it says that destination partition size for windows vista installation is less than 10GB or incorrect partition size was entered. I also tried to take the HDD out and put it in my PC thanks to the advice MrBig , but my PC did not recognize it. If I buy a new hard disk would everything work again? Or is there something else I need to do.

 

[Jzero]

My laptop's hard disk crashed and I can't boot it. If I buy a new hard disk would everything work again? Or is there something else I need to do.

The hard drive contains all your info/programs/etc so you would need to transfer everything and re-install windows or mac.

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

The hard drive contains all your info/programs/etc so you would need to transfer everything and re-install windows or mac.

Thank you. I edited to give a clearer picture. I have all my data backed up on my external HDD. So all I need to do is transfer these info into the new hard drive. How would I do that?

 

[Cpt.Underpants]

Looking to upgrade my current processor (Intel Pentium E5300 2.6 ghz), to a Intel E6700 Pentium Dual-Core Processor - 3.20GHz, 2MB Cache, Socket 775

My current processor has the same max TDP of 65W and uses the LGA 775 socket, do I need to know anything more before I make this purchase?

 

[GhaleonEB]

So, how do I 1) find out what kind of HDD I have, and 2) install a larger capacity one which will fit, and 3) copy my files/programs/OS over to it?

I don't need a new computer, but I'm out of capacity.

 

[Grisby]

I recently had that happen to my laptop, something messed with the settings but a system restore to a previous from a few days ago re-enabled it. Can't hurt to try a small roll-back.

It fixed itself. Now it's acting all weird again. I'll give this a shot though. thanks bro.