Dalo Harkin

One is talking about a Macbook and one something completely different :) I wouldnt touch medion with a barge pole, acer, HP or Dell are fine.

If its fine at the windows start up then yes it will be the driver software or the configuration of it. What have you used to enable the dual monitors? windows or the ATI or Nvidia driver software? We need more info on the GPU make model etc, at the very least if its ATI or Nvidia

I agree with Randy, find what you need and then burn it to CD/DVD or put it on a USB stick. you can try and fix the user profile, but again I would try the above first. If the PC came with the OS pre loaded then there is probably a partition on the HDD that has the OS on it

As its a lappy did you have a partition on the laptop that you used to reinstall windows or was it a disk set? you need to install the chipset drivers and GPU drivers otherwise it will be using the OS built in ones and they are not very good, they should be on a disk supplied with the lappy or get them from the manufacturers website.

If it didnt boot then how did you get the OS installed on the new drive? I think that the OS needs reloading...dont install any drivers for anything other than those you need like the SATA drivers (these are loaded at the blue XP set up screen just before the files are loaded, you need to press F6)

Hi and welcome to FPCH :)

Check that the pins are not bent (or missing) too at both ends of the cable. 99% of the time when you get distortions like that on the screen its the pins or the GPU is failing, if there are 2x outputs on the back then try both. Its not uncommon for one to go and one be fine. Let us know :)

You could replace the capacitors, but what if thats not the cause...bulging capacitors does not always mean they are the cause, yes bulging indicates an issue (but not uncommon especially in an 8yr old system) systems run for years even with bulging capacitors. If you replace the capacitors and they turn out not to be the issue, then you are back at square one. An 8yr old MOBO would cost £10-£20 or less from ebay so is it worth it, if it was an older high spec MOBO then yes replacement of the capacitors would make sense but I dont think it does on such an old system

So you have upgraded the RAM, was it matched to the same speed of the other RAM that was already in the system? What else did you do to the PC, did you upgrade the BIOS ? you say that you installed a new HDD, is the old one still in the same system? did you change the boot order in the BIOS to the NEW HDD (this is one of the causes for the blinking cursor, as the system is trying to find the OS) Hope this helps.

Ok, but some/most of that will be to pick up the slack from the GPU, your going to have to upgrade the GPU anyway, so do it first and see if it still throttles the CPU. what was your budget for a GPU?

Glad you got it sorted :)

I know you will find more for the likes of Norton and AVG over any others

You can go as far as you want to but it will be limited by your editing software and chosen OS. to take advantage of over 3.75GB of RAM you need a 64bit OS to watch Blu rays takes less processing and graphical power than you think. I would test your current PC with your current editing suite and see how much of an upgrade you need. You can tell if the CPU and RAM are throttling from the task manager :)

Sorry Randy, Last note on this I mentioned how bad Norton used to be if you type say 'Norton false positives' into Google you will get an idea.. While its not as bad as it used to be I know lots of people both standard users and IT professionals who will not touch Norton with a barge pole from 2003 to 2008 seemed to be where all the problems were. It only gets installed on so many PCs as the manufacturers DELL, HP, whoever else ship them with a 3 month free trial, most people just run with it. In my personal and professional opinion I wouldn't recommend it

Try the DEL key repeatedly upon startup, some manufacturers remove the BIOS post screen so as not to confuse inexperienced pc users. It is normally DEL or one of the F1-12 keys

Jayden, if you give us more of an idea of what you are trying to do then maybe we could assist you further.

Hmmm, so Quicktime to Xvid.........dont know of any free ones, will have to come back to you Bob, I'll do it later, pm me your email address and I'll sort you something

Nortons 'home' software is shockingly bad, I agree that its got better the last few years (not as resource hungry as it once was and updates are more frequent) and many of the main AVs around still use some of Nortons technology. Their corporate stuff I have never had an issue with, and the best firewall I have ever used was Sygate (again part of Norton) but is it all necessary?? I now use Windows firewall and MSE (and I have not had a virus, malware or anything for longer than I can remember) I have back ups just incase, but as far as I am concerned no more is needed.... If you know what to do and what not to do on the net then you shouldnt get infected with anything.

DivX latest version has many conversion tools built in, check that first

If your not planning on gaming or major video editing (basically anything that uses lots of graphical power) then onboard GPU or a low end card will be fine, again 8GB RAM is designed for major video editing so you can go with the recommended spec for which OS you get. You dont need a quad core CPU either, just get a dual core. Now peoples versions of video editing vary, so what you think it basic could be different to mine. since you were asking about quad core cpus and 8GB RAM, you need to clarify your idea of basic :)

Its flashing away as you need to run cmd as an Admin, right click the command prompt and run as administator. then run the ipconfig/all command you need to scroll right to the top and look for: Ethernet adapter local area connection Then IPV4 internet address 192.168.1.** < this is your IP address. If you need any help then let me know

Glad you got it sorted, MOBO jumpers are very loose, I use older optical drive/HDD ones as they are a snugger fit :)

The Main way to 'let a virus loose' is with an .exe Not all Virus's are designed the same and all the previous info is right, but they are some not mentioned, while P2P is the biggest method for virus's to travel the web, they are normally disguised as video files, program exe's etc. Do not install anything that you do not know the source, and if you have an incling something is didgy then have your AV check it before you launch the exe. 99.9% of Virus's can be killed with a reformat, virus's are not as common as they once were and its now more malware/spyware related which in most cases can be more dangerous and are harder to spot. If in any doubt then head over to the malware section of the forum.

Hi and welcome to FPCH :)

You need to go into the BIOS and set the HDD device priority as DSTM mentioned. Depending on your MOBO (Motherboard) the SATA ports are labelled 1,2,3 etc. If you are putting your 'old' drive in to say 1, when your other is in 3 it will boot 1 first, if that makes sense. Also when you have more than one HDD installed (regardless whether SATA, IDE or SCSI) there is a list, you need to check that the 'new' drive is at the top of that list. Hope this helps, when you make amendments in the BIOS always remember to SAVE and EXIT