Dalo Harkin

Yes thats fine then - well lets hope that you will be up and running soon :)

How old is the PC - may need a new CMOS battery, the battery could be sapped and not holding the BIOS setting resulting in a crash. And could explain the issue of random timings of crashes

£40 labour for 10 minutes - OMG did you give them your copy of XP? if not and they say that they are going to install it - they will do 1 of 2 things 1 - charge you, as they should have a volume licence 2 - install a cracked one - Illegal

I too find it highly unlikely, chances are more probable that the Southbridge has popped as opposed to the ports themselves. So the cheapest option is to replace the MOBO.

so basically you can insert your XP CD and run through the steps of deleting all the info on the drive and then reinstalling windows fresh - depending on your computer and where you got it - you will have a recovery CD maybe 2 or an XP disk in a case with a serial number on it.

You can connect them to your PC - as for the modchips these are normally for using copied games and as such - we will not provide assistance with this aspect!

What Router do you have? so do you use the Windows utilty to set up the connection - or does it come with something from Dell. Make sure that BOTH are not running as they will conflict. try using the one that you are not currently using - sounds like it just needs reconnecting - do you have the password for accessing the router - (normally found on the underside of the router)

Agreed, especially as you are saying that it happens at the same time everyday - you can normally check with your ISP in terms of what they are doing on their home page - chances are that they run a diagnostic at this time everyday.

Hi, First off go for the Antec case - they are much roomier and provide much better cooling. Get another MOBO, the one that you have selected is expensive and not any better than others. SLI is a waste of time spend the money on a single GPU, that performs much better and costs around the same as an SLI setup. Go the QUAD CPU route as they cost the same and they are more futureproof than dual, and if you wanted they can be OC'ed better. I have added a link to a previous thread http://extremetechsupport.com/forum/pc-building-and-hardware-reviews/3957-building-new-computer-need-advice.html to expalin in more detail the past 'issues' with some setups.

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Sounds like the GPU (Graphics card) take the GPU out and clean the connectors both on the card and in the slot for dust

They are easy to hook up - have a look at my sig and there are some pics :D

Hi, Welcome to FPCH :)

Lady, there is not much to putting a PC together its the parts that follow and the initial choosing of the parts that is hard - have a look at my PC BUILD on my signature and there are pics in there of a PC - you may get a better understanding of a pc just by that.

ok - when you say the colours mess up - are there black horizontal lines - this indicates a heat issue. did you remove the old graphics card drivers - to do this download the latest driver for your model. then goto add/remove programs and remove the graphics driver will be ATI or NVIDIA and then manually navigate to C:/ there will be a file called NVIDIA or ATI and then enter that folder there should be 1 file in there for eg 188.12 (Nvidia) or 8.9 for ATI - DELETE all the files and then restart. install the new driver you downloaded and see how it goes please.

Ok - you have 2 routes here:- 1- buy an IDE HDD at a cost (lets say £40 for arguments sake) and lose the ability to use one of the DVDRW and have a SATA as a paperweight 2- buy Vista (£50ish OEM) which recognises SATA drives, and be able to use both DVDRW

It can only be 3 things really:- Fans Optical drive Hard drive as they are the only parts within the PC that physically move. people at PC World may sell windows for dummies books - but i wonder how many have actually read it lol

£40 :eek: I would rather pay an extra £10-£15 for Vista!

Floppy IDE and the Optical (DVD/CD) are different, you may have to live without one of your dvdrw for the moment and buy a PCI card that has the IDE slots on them - they are only about £4 off ebay or scan etc

It does sound like the HDD is failing - I would have tried the Boot priority just to see if it improved - there could be a conflict causing the splash to take longer to load. Ok - so when you say you sped the internet up - what did you do - install a program that claims to speed it up?

Right - I had a quick look on Asus.com under the model number you gave and the comments say that it is sold OEM and that they do not support it.

Have you recently reinstalled the OS or been in the BIOS - you need to set the first boot device to HDD and disable the rest and it will then not search for the CDROM - seems like its kust taking longer than normal (this can also happen if you leave some CD/DVD in the drives) ;)

No - they need to be installed prior to the OS - as the drives are newer than the OS and the OS will not recognise the drive. You just need to add them all to the floppy disk as a BOOT DISK and then when windows is installing its press F6 when needed - you only get about 2-3 seconds to do this or you will miss it and have to redo. What is the board number and I will check the drivers you have are the right ones.