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for example has recently been replaced (MCSE is the Microsoft Certified System Engineer) which I have, but its now been superceded because of server 2008 (MCSE was based across server 2003) There are literally hundreds of courses and you need to define what you actually want to do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.

I personally wouldnt use the mounting kits for HDDs What case do you use? you often get this when its a 'screwless' design and the rails wobble slightly when the drives spin up, most drives are 5400 or 7200 RPM and you shouldnt get excess vibration from either. Check they are secured properly

According to this:- DESCRIPTION: Kingston's KHX8500D2T1K2/4G is a kit of two 256M x 64-bit 2GB (2048MB) DDR2-1066 CL5 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) memory modules, based on sixteen 128M x 8-bit DDR2 FBGA components per module. Total kit capacity is 4GB (4096MB). Each module pair has been tested to run at DDR2- 1066MHz at a latency timing of 5-5-5-15 at 2.2V - 2.3V. The SPD is programmed to JEDEC standard latency 800Mhz timing of 5-5-5-18 at 1.8V. Each 240-pin DIMM uses gold contact fingers and requires +1.8V. The electrical and mechanical specifications are as follows: They are fine, when you look at the RAM timings in the BIOS, just set them all to manual, if no joy then use the above info for the timings and voltage :)

No worries, Let us know, if you are planning on going high end, new cards are launched next month so hold off for now ;-)

Use this as a guide http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

If that GPU was running at 127C then it would be damaged, we need to know what you are using to monitor the temps, 99% of programs that 'claim' to monitor GPU temps dont do it accurately enough Pixelated graphics would be overheating, but normally the RAM as opposed to the core itself

I have virgin media and the 50meg variant, have you checked in the routers home page to check that the router is acting as a DHCP server (where it dishes the IP adresses to the devices) it sounds like you are getting an IP conflict

Did you change anything in the BIOS, the BIOS is looking for a boot device, so either you have disturbed the power or data lead that connects the HDD to the Motherboard or changed something in the BIOS

It will have paste or a thermal pad, if its doesnt have any then yes it will be overheating. Games and AV scans will heat the CPU fairly quick. Sort the thermal issue first and if you dont know how let us know

Personally I would go into device manager and try and install the driver and when it searches will search windows update for one too..

Sounds like the HDD is about to die, if you can get into windows or safe mode then back up what you can onto a flash drive or CD/DVD and when that is done, come back and let us know and we will help further