Dalo Harkin

Hi regulars and new members (some might remember me :) ) Thought I would pop in to see how you are all doing, saw about Nev (sad times) just goes to show what you can miss when away

You normally get distortions like that when there is excess heat within the system (normally the graphics card, which will be onboard in yours by the looks of it) you can try the compressed air as has already been suggested. If you have more than one GPU port on the back of the PC try another because its not uncommon for one to stop working with all the plugging in/out

Well Virgin have just changed ours in Stockport and mine is now 200 down and 15 up - thanks virgin media, now if you could only get it to not throw a fit at 12am when I am online gaming that would be great ;)

Another friend, such a lovely guy and always willing to help anyone that needed it. I will see you again one day

As Synapse has said there are lots and they change as the OS's do too, MCSE for example has recently been replaced (MCSE is the Microsoft Certified System Engineer) which I have, but its now been superceded because of server 2008 (MCSE was based across server 2003) There are literally hundreds of courses and you need to define what you actually want to do

Are you sure that the cables are not crossover cables which are used when linking computers together to transfer data. You also need to check that you have the drivers installed for the NIC (use control panel and then device manager) look for the Network Interface Card and check that there are no yellow exclamations next to it.....yellow exclamations indicate no driver is loaded for the device or that there is a problem with it (NICs can also be disconnected from the BIOS)

As I said, for very good reasons, I have three drives fitted, C: drive - 400 GB unit, 84 GB used (always used – main drive) D: drive - 300 GB unit. 19.5 GB used (always used) E: drive – 200 GB unit. 105 GB used.(used occasionally – for storage of documents, images, pdfs) You say that these are used for very good reason, what if the E drive failed, if that is the only drive being used for backing up docs and the amount of space unused, just use the one disk (400GB) a delay like the one you have described can be down to years of installing/uninstalling programs have a look in msconfig then startup

Is it OEM or Retail? Retail has both 32 and 64 bit versions on the same disk, its only the serial number that dictates which version actually installs

Glad you got it sorted

No worries, the modules you have are 2x2GB which your MOBO says that it can only take a maximum of 1GB per slot With regards to the BIOS you want the second tab on the left (phoenix) from memory anyway, it tells the CPU speed and what the RAM is running at 5-5-5-15 for example. Just check it matches what I posted above, but as you said the MOBO only takes 1GB modules it may make no difference, but worth a try

Sorry I'm late to welcome you. Glad to have you with us

Maybe you should drop in more often Mike........

The stopping and starting could just be the drive spinning up/down, but it shouldnt be that noticeable Are these SATA drives that you are referring to. Check the power connections on the back of the drive and also the data cable to the board. Are you connecting the drive from a direct cable from the PSU or using a MOLEX splitter or multiple SATA connector (daisy chain)

Coolermaster (where is the sick face smiley lol) get onto Antec' website and get something decent :D

Let us know your budget and we can price you something up.