Dalo Harkin

Have you installed the latest flash and VGA drivers as previously posted?

Avast is the best free version in my mind. Norton as listed in another post I would rather chop my own arm off than use it :eek: Sygate is not mentioned here - I know that they are mainly reknowned for the firewalls but the AV is good too and yes I know before someone jumps in that Norton own them - but they are so different :D

I love this argument - me and mates have it all the time, one says 360 one says PS3 and I always say pc - they go on about this and that and it comes down to:- what do companies use to make 360 and PS3 games - A PC plain and simple argument over! :D

Have seen Nlite before - its always mentioned in Custom PC but have never used it personally - I use Vista now and it does all the hardware updates for you. Very useful tool if like you said Flair you have alot of 'obscure' hardware and need drivers for them all adding, this takes the hastle out of it all.

I think you have bought a ADSL router for a CABLE setup:- ADSL uses RJ11 think they are called (phone line sockets) Virgin uses RJ45 (Ethernet cables)

Can you take a pic of the cable and post please

What is the spec of the PC - if it is very old then Vista is out the window and XP home may be a more viable option - have a look on places like Scan.co.uk and microdirect.co.uk and they have them very reasonably priced

There is nothing on a pc that you cannot do yourself and £400 is a joke :eek: Like you say, you can build a new PC for that. if all else fails you can buy a version of windows (£50ish) and we can talk you through installing it.

Ok the wire that comes from the back of the NTL modem - should be blue or white and is currently in the back of your PC via the ethernet cable. you need to unplug it from the computer side and put it in the one that on the router thats on its own (not the 4 together) but then you need to run another Ethernet cable from one of the (4) to the place you removed the original cable from the back of your PC. And Voila :D you will then need to go into the routers home page (will be an ip address ) and set the WII up

If you buy a router ie netgear - they have 4 ports on the back for cables and you can connect wirelessly aswell. on most routers you need to go into the routers home page and put the MAC address of the WII in so that it can access the router

The only part of this that will physically increase speed is the disk defrag and closing tasks that are making the CPU work harder.

Stay away from a MOBO that uses DDR3 memory it is so expensive and only really benefits a quad core setup - and even then only marginally. I would hold off on the new MOBOtoo, buy the GPU and see how it runs - upgrading to a PCI 2.0 board may only increase speed marginally.

Right - you wont believe this one - Still not working (yesterday morning) so went and got an ASUS P5K premium wifi (blackpearl edition :D) installed all the hardware on it and it crashed but alot quicker - no windows just constant reboots. So took the plunge and inserted my Vista disk and set all the options in the BIOS etc - formatted 3 of the drives in there:- GAMES OLD C drive NEW C drive and now all works swimmingly :mad: So I now have an awesome MOBO (ASUS) and another awesome MOBO (ABIT) - sticking with the ASUS after the whole ABIT not making MOBO previous post of mine. And will be ebaying the AW9D MAX - seeing as now I know it's all ok

Welcome, hardware changes every 2 minutes - not hard to get out of sync (see what I did there :D lol)

Ok - thats 'normally' a serious HDD problem, or serious driver compatabilty issues - guessing it worked before HDD would be my first guess - is the HDD old? Have you installed the latest BIOS? is the HDD the primary boot device? have you changes anything recently?

Under these settings in the BIOS there should be an option saying 'boot other device' go in and DISABLE it - try again ;)

It will run - but will run alot slower than it should - you will not physically notice the difference though - get the OCZ PC 8500 and save yourself some cash. you can get 2GB of it now for around £55

An 8600GT you will notice a massive change

You need to put the MOBO disk in that came with the PC and it will find the drivers that you need - have you used windows update - they are normally on there under 'optional downloads'

As wolfey has said - its the MOBO that makes the PCI card run at 2.0 the GPU may itself be 2.0 but will only run at 1.0 or 1.1 if the motherboard does not support 2.0. the 9600 card is not as good as the 8600 in terms of power to cost ratio

Dorsil - please can you tell me your full system spec including MOBO PSU RAM OS and anything else you can think of - the 2400,2600 and 2900 are notorious for being power hungry - your PSU may not be up to it

Check the settings in the BIOS too - sounds like the card is running in PCI 8 speed and not 16. can you list all yoyur system please including PSU and MEMORY

Do you just have 2 ram slots on the MOBO or are there 4 - some of the slots on MOBOS are prown to not working and you have to use the others. Also check in the BIOS that the timings and the voltage is correct for the RAM - it may be ok with one stick but to have 2 sticks in you may need to alter the timings - it will tell you in your MOBO book if need be

When you first installed the OS did you install the drivers from the MOBO disk? Chances are that the MOBO needs the PCI drivers and thats whats making it crash What OS are you running?

If it works through an ethernet cable then it is surely the settings on the router - what is the make and model of the router? I know that Netgear ones you need to put the MAC address in the router settings in order for it to let you connect to the router - come back with the model of the router and I will tell you how to set the settings in the router.