Dalo Harkin

Hi Kelly, Glad you used Acronis (better than the others) yes its as simple as you describe - for the less advanced user it would be better to use partition magic or something in the winodws environment and then installing the drive and loading onto the partition. From what I remember they do both have to be ACTIVE

In terms of actually installing the RAM - there are 2 screws on a small plate on the underside of the laptop undo them and take the plate off you can see the RAM modules and you just pull 2 clips to the side to eject the RAM and then to install you push it in at an angle and then 'click and lock into place' and you push it gently down to fit the other on top :)

As it stands at the moment the ONLY card that can play Crysis at 1680x1050 is the Geforce 9800X2 and that is the fastest card at the moment. As for the CPU we are now on a 45Nm chip and that has changed within a year as they were 65Nm. You need Vista to run it in DX10 - again DX10.1 is here, no one could tell you accurately what you would need to play these games. A good bet would be around the same power as the above card - nearer the time maybe invest in another as for the CPU - Quad core is overkill - have you ever seen a game that uses the four cores - the only one at the moment is Supreme Commander - if you look at the back of modern game boxes the requirements are on the GPU and not the CPU - you are better off getting the highest core 2 duo you can afford. and some decent DDR2 as again DDR3 only benefits quad cores and only marginally for the cost. Hope this helps

you wont notice the difference just by just surfing the net - its only really for more intensive tasks

Ok I have never seen that router - do you remember setting up the settings on the router at any point - some you have to go into the router page - its an IP address like 104.105.16.6 (for example) and you sometimes need to set the router to recognise the devices (dongles by their Mac address) does any of this seem apparent previously?

Also Dawn can you please list the make and model of the router you are using

Agree with Wolfey on this one NOD all the way. Windows live one care is good as an all round package and covers up to 3 PC's for around £37 a year

Did you used to have BOTH sticks of ram in it a while ago, or just the one - depending on how old the MOBO is it may not take 2GB. There may be a fault with one of the RAM slots on the MOBO - put one of the RAM in the LEFT hand slot - try and boot to windows if its ok then shut down and then try the other RAM in the same slot - do as above if ok - and then try the RAM in the RIGHT side as above with both sticks and see how that goes - if it's ok with both sets in both RAM slots then you either need a BIOS update or the MOBO will not support 2GB unless you get the BIOS update

Matty, If you reset the BIOS the automatic setting is to turn the onboard VGA on - there will be an option on the BIOS that says 'integrated' something - cant remember off hand but the VGA option will be in their - DISABLE it and save the BIOS

try in safe mode to delete it and see if that does the job :)

so the board has onboard graphics and you have a seperate graphics card too, if thats the case - you need to disable the onboard VGA in the BIOS - but that is only if you have onboard VGA and a Graphics card installed - they will conflict if both left on thats all

you may just need to reinstall windows Lee - do you have another HDD that you can install an OS to?

There is a small program that you can download from the nvidia website and it gets rid of all the 'bumph' that gets installed along with the drivers - when you come to update - if you dont know where the files are located this is a great tool to use. ATI also have a version available on their website.

Just checked and they should be 175.16 for XP and they were released on the 13-05-08 go to your C drive and open the file called Nvidia and there will be version numbers like the one above. if there is more than one delete all of them other than the latest version and restart. see if that helps and post back please

your motherboard should do it automatically - so we will just leave it for now - are you 100% that you have the latest drivers for your card?

sounds like you need a different driver for it - visit the manufacturers website and get the latest drivers

Ok - it doesn't sound like you have caused any damage then :eek: and on a positive point you won't need to replace the compound lol ok so you put the CPU and Heatsink combined back in the PC the way it came out etc and put the fan connector back in the CPU header (the three pin white thing on the board it came from)

I hope not - it sounds like you have lifted the lot up - the heatsink just sits on top of the CPU (the CPU is what is locked in place by some mechanism that basically folds over the edges of the CPU and is locked inplace by an arm - if you lifted the heatsink up and there were pins underneath the pins are the bottom of the CPU and that sits in the Motherboard. did you rest the pins on anything?

Ok this is what the top of the CPU would have looked like after you took the heatsink off (this is a GPU just using for clarity)

Ok - when you took the heatsink off could you physically see the top of the CPU - If you take the heatsink off you need to replace the compound - its easy to do, and you cant really mess it up :)

It's a love hate thing - everyone loves to hate it :D (me not included - I love Vista) When you say that they all come out in gobbledygook - are they just labelled as numbers and letters or is it that you open them and they are all like that. Chances are that whatever program you used to write the files in is either not installed or not set to read the documents and they are opening in something like notepad. if you right click on one of the files and then open with there should be an option to select whatever program they were wrote in

Welcome Kathy, There is a wealth of knowledge on the site and we aren't too bad either Lol

was there any grey/white mixture on the underside of the heatsink - and did you clean it off with TIM? you need to have a compound mixture between the CPU and Heatsink as it transfers the heat - as there is none the BIOS is shutting the PC down to stop the CPU getting damaged

CPU-Z will tell you - ok we need to get this clarified - did you just clean the heatsink on the CPU or did you take it off the CPU and clean it??

think wolfey means do you have a 1GB stick and 1 512mb or 3 512mb sticks etc